Awk Debugging (The GNU Awk User’s Guide)
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14.1.3 awk Debugging
Debugging an awk
program has some specific aspects that are not shared with programs written in other languages.
First of all, the fact that awk
programs usually take input line by line from a file or files and operate on those lines using specific rules makes it especially useful to organize viewing the execution of the program in terms of these rules. As we will see, each awk
rule is treated almost like a function call, with its own specific block of instructions.
In addition, because awk
is by design a very concise language, it is easy to lose sight of everything that is going on “inside” each line of awk
code. The debugger provides the opportunity to look at the individual primitive instructions carried out by the higher-level awk
commands.97
Footnotes
(97)
The “primitive instructions” are defined by gawk
itself; the debugger does not work at the level of machine instructions.