Beta release of gawk 5.3.1

This note is to announce the BETA release of GNU Awk 5.3.1.

It is available from:

https://www.skeeve.com/gawk/gawk-5.3.0c.tar.gz

This is a bug-fix (patch) release.

The important part of the NEWS file is below.

As far as I can tell, the documentation and code have both hit the
freeze point.

So, why do a beta release? So that you, yes you, the end user, can see
if anything I've done breaks gawk for you.  Then you can TELL ME ABOUT
IT so that I can fix it for the final release.

Thanks,

Arnold Robbins
arnold@skeeve.com
---------------------------------------------
   Copyright (C) 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024
   Free Software Foundation, Inc.
  
   Copying and distribution of this file, with or without modification,
   are permitted in any medium without royalty provided the copyright
   notice and this notice are preserved.

Changes from 5.3.0 to 5.3.x
---------------------------

1. More subtle issues related to uninitialized array elements have
   been fixed.

2. A number of bugs in the debugger related to handling of arrays
   have been fixed.

3. Some subtle bugs in the API have been fixed.

4. Use of MPFR is now possible again on 32-bit Power PC Mac systems.

5. Race conditions around broken pipes for system() and read and write
   pipes should now be closed off.

6. Support for OSF/1 has been removed.

7. The never-documented --nostalgia option has been removed. It was
   causing bug reports.

8. The implementation of printf/sprintf has been thoroughly reworked
   in order to make the code more maintainable and to fix a goodly
   number of corner cases.

9. As usual, there have been several minor code cleanups and bug fixes.
   See the ChangeLog for details.
--
Aharon (Arnold) Robbins arnold AT skeeve DOT com