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a2p (1)
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a2p (1) ( Русские man: Команды и прикладные программы пользовательского уровня )
a2p (1) ( Linux man: Команды и прикладные программы пользовательского уровня )
NAME
a2p - Awk to Perl translator
SYNOPSIS
a2p[options]filename
DESCRIPTION
A2p takes an awk script specified on the command line (or
from standard input) and produces a comparable perl script
on the standard output.
Options
Options include:
-D<number>
sets debugging flags.
-F<character>
tells a2p that this awk script is always invoked with
this -F switch.
-n<fieldlist>
specifies the names of the input fields if input does
not have to be split into an array. If you were
translating an awk script that processes the password
file, you might say:
a2p -7 -nlogin.password.uid.gid.gcos.shell.home
Any delimiter can be used to separate the field names.
-<number>
causes a2p to assume that input will always have that
many fields.
-o tells a2p to use old awk behavior. The only current
differences are:
Old awk always has a line loop, even if there are
no line actions, whereas new awk does not.
In old awk, sprintf is extremely greedy about its
arguments. For example, given the statement
print sprintf(some_args), extra_args;
old awk considers extra_args to be arguments to
`sprintf'; new awk considers them arguments to
`print'.
"Considerations"
A2p cannot do as good a job translating as a human
would, but it usually does pretty well. There are some
areas where you may want to examine the perl script
produced and tweak it some. Here are some of them, in
no particular order.
There is an awk idiom of putting int() around a string
expression to force numeric interpretation, even though
the argument is always integer anyway. This is
generally unneeded in perl, but a2p can't tell if the
argument is always going to be integer, so it leaves it
in. You may wish to remove it.
Perl differentiates numeric comparison from string
comparison. Awk has one operator for both that decides
at run time which comparison to do. A2p does not try
to do a complete job of awk emulation at this point.
Instead it guesses which one you want. It's almost
always right, but it can be spoofed. All such guesses
are marked with the comment "`#???'". You should go
through and check them. You might want to run at least
once with the -w switch to perl, which will warn you if
you use == where you should have used eq.
Perl does not attempt to emulate the behavior of awk in
which nonexistent array elements spring into existence
simply by being referenced. If somehow you are relying
on this mechanism to create null entries for a
subsequent for...in, they won't be there in perl.
If a2p makes a split line that assigns to a list of
variables that looks like (Fld1, Fld2, Fld3...) you may
want to rerun a2p using the -n option mentioned above.
This will let you name the fields throughout the
script. If it splits to an array instead, the script
is probably referring to the number of fields
somewhere.
The exit statement in awk doesn't necessarily exit; it
goes to the END block if there is one. Awk scripts
that do contortions within the END block to bypass the
block under such circumstances can be simplified by
removing the conditional in the END block and just
exiting directly from the perl script.
Perl has two kinds of array, numerically-indexed and
associative. Perl associative arrays are called
"hashes". Awk arrays are usually translated to hashes,
but if you happen to know that the index is always
going to be numeric you could change the {...} to
[...]. Iteration over a hash is done using the keys()
function, but iteration over an array is NOT. You
might need to modify any loop that iterates over such
an array.
Awk starts by assuming OFMT has the value %.6g. Perl
starts by assuming its equivalent, $#, to have the
value %.20g. You'll want to set $# explicitly if you
use the default value of OFMT.
Near the top of the line loop will be the split
operation that is implicit in the awk script. There
are times when you can move this down past some
conditionals that test the entire record so that the
split is not done as often.
For aesthetic reasons you may wish to change the array
base $[ from 1 back to perl's default of 0, but
remember to change all array subscripts AND all
substr() and index() operations to match.
Cute comments that say "# Here is a workaround because
awk is dumb" are passed through unmodified.
Awk scripts are often embedded in a shell script that
pipes stuff into and out of awk. Often the shell
script wrapper can be incorporated into the perl
script, since perl can start up pipes into and out of
itself, and can do other things that awk can't do by
itself.
Scripts that refer to the special variables RSTART and
RLENGTH can often be simplified by referring to the
variables $`, $& and $', as long as they are within the
scope of the pattern match that sets them.
The produced perl script may have subroutines defined
to deal with awk's semantics regarding getline and
print. Since a2p usually picks correctness over
efficiency. it is almost always possible to rewrite
such code to be more efficient by discarding the
semantic sugar.
For efficiency, you may wish to remove the keyword from
any return statement that is the last statement
executed in a subroutine. A2p catches the most common
case, but doesn't analyze embedded blocks for subtler
cases.
ARGV[0] translates to $ARGV0, but ARGV[n] translates to
$ARGV[$n]. A loop that tries to iterate over ARGV[0]
won't find it.
ENVIRONMENT
A2p uses no environment variables.
AUTHOR
Larry Wall <larry@wall.org>
FILES
SEE ALSO
perl The perl compiler/interpreter
s2p sed to perl translator
DIAGNOSTICS
BUGS
It would be possible to emulate awk's behavior in selecting
string versus numeric operations at run time by inspection
of the operands, but it would be gross and inefficient.
Besides, a2p almost always guesses right.
Storage for the awk syntax tree is currently static, and can
run out.