Re: substr() - copying or not copying, that is here the question.

In article <683e9c84$0$691$14726298@news.sunsite.dk>,
Mack The Knife <mack@the-knife.org> wrote:

In article <101fv4s$1g5c8$1@dont-email.me>,
Janis Papanagnou  <janis_papanagnou+ng@hotmail.com> wrote:

Okay, maybe I could write an extension to work on memory
mapped files - the data originally stems from a file -
and seek/read through "C" mechanisms. (But that's huge
effort compared to some natively available function. And
then I'd probably better implement that straightly in "C"
instead of using Awk, in the first place, since I'd have
to implement the GNU Awk Extension anyway in "C".)
>
Janis

>
You could check w/Arnold about his consulting rates. Perhaps
he would do a patch for you, or write an extension function
for you.

Yeah, I think that aspect of it has already been covered.

The thing is - you have to understand that the mentality of a certain kind
of poster is to not be oriented towards: "How can I get my specific,
personal problem solved?"

But rather, it is: "Can I get (*) my personal pet feature into the GAWK core?"

(*) And by "get", I mean "nag the core developers into adding it".

And don't get me wrong, this approach is not without merit.  Getting it
into the core benefits everybody, not just the poster (nagger).  Suppose
that GAWK had a misfeature where when you added 2 and 2, you get 3.79.  If
we could nag them into changing it so that adding 2 and 2 produced 4
instead, that would benefit everybody and it would be worthwhile for us all
to do that nagging (rather than have one of us here on the newsgroup cook
up a personalized solution that benefits only the poster).

But, getting back to topic, it (the "mentality" to which I refer above)
does represent a stark difference of opinion and purpose to what most of us
here on this and other newsgroups hold to.

Anyway, there is more I could say on this subject, but I think I've said
enough for now.  But it is likely that an extension to do exactly this will
end up getting written by me and posted here soon - given that I've already
spec'd it out pretty thoroughly.

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like Hillary Clinton did.

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