Probable Future Extensions
==========================

   This section briefly lists extensions that indicate the directions
we are currently considering for `gawk'.  The file `FUTURES' in the
`gawk' distributions lists these extensions, as well as several others.

`RS' as a regexp
     The meaning of `RS' may be generalized along the lines of `FS'.

Control of subprocess environment
     Changes made in `gawk' to the array `ENVIRON' may be propagated to
     subprocesses run by `gawk'.

Databases
     It may be possible to map a GDBM/NDBM/SDBM file into an `awk'
     array.

Single-character fields
     The null string, `""', as a field separator, will cause field
     splitting and the `split' function to separate individual
     characters.  Thus, `split(a, "abcd", "")' would yield `a[1] ==
     "a"', `a[2] == "b"', and so on.

More `lint' warnings
     There are more things that could be checked for portability.

`RECLEN' variable for fixed length records
     Along with `FIELDWIDTHS', this would speed up the processing of
     fixed-length records.

`RT' variable to hold the record terminator
     It is occasionally useful to have access to the actual string of
     characters that matched the `RS' variable.  The `RT' variable
     would hold these characters.

A `restart' keyword
     After modifying `$0', `restart' would restart the pattern matching
     loop, without reading a new record from the input.

A `|&' redirection
     The `|&' redirection, in place of `|', would open a two-way
     pipeline for communication with a sub-process (via `getline' and
     `print' and `printf').

`IGNORECASE' affecting all comparisons
     The effects of the `IGNORECASE' variable may be generalized to all
     string comparisons, and not just regular expression operations.

A way to mix command line source code and library files
     There may be a new option that would make it possible to easily
     use library functions from a program entered on the command line.

GNU-style long options
     We will add GNU-style long options to `gawk' for compatibility
     with other GNU programs.  (For example, `--field-separator=:'
     would be equivalent to `-F:'.)