Re: GNU Awk - inplace editing

In article <100p11m$3uh3m$1@dont-email.me>,
Janis Papanagnou  <janis_papanagnou+ng@hotmail.com> wrote:

In GNU Awk I was looking for the in-place option (similar to sed -i).
I thought there once was some _simple_ option usable from the command
line. (Or am I misremembering?)
>
The manual now suggests to use a GNU Awk "inplace" _Extension_ for that
 gawk -i inplace ...
and
 gawk -i inplace -v inplace::suffix=.bak ...
respectively.
>
That's not exactly as simple to use as, say,
 gawk -i ...
and
 gawk -i.bak
so I suppose there's a reason for the added complexity in the handling.
>
Does anyone know that reason or remember a rationale? - I don't recall
any discussions about that...

I've explained this a few times over the years (in this newsgroup).

There was never a "-i" option in Gawk that meant "inplace" (and there never
will be).

The key to understanding this is to understand that (in Gawk), the "i" in
"-i" does not stand for "inplace".  It stands for "include".

Once you understand that, all becomes clear.

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