Node:Manual History, Next:How To Contribute, Previous:Conventions, Up:Preface
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the production and distribution of freely distributable software. It was founded by Richard M. Stallman, the author of the original Emacs editor. GNU Emacs is the most widely used version of Emacs today.
The GNU1
Project is an ongoing effort on the part of the Free Software
Foundation to create a complete, freely distributable, POSIX-compliant
computing environment.
The FSF uses the "GNU General Public License" (GPL) to ensure that
their software's
source code is always available to the end user. A
copy of the GPL is included
in this Web page
for your reference
(see GNU General Public License).
The GPL applies to the C language source code for gawk.
To find out more about the FSF and the GNU Project online,
see the GNU Project's home page.
This Web page may also be read from
their web site.
A shell, an editor (Emacs), highly portable optimizing C, C++, and
Objective-C compilers, a symbolic debugger and dozens of large and
small utilities (such as gawk), have all been completed and are
freely available. The GNU operating
system kernel (the HURD), has been released but is still in an early
stage of development.
Until the GNU operating system is more fully developed, you should
consider using GNU/Linux, a freely distributable, Unix-like operating
system for Intel 80386, DEC Alpha, Sun SPARC, IBM S/390, and other
systems.2
There are
many books on GNU/Linux. One that is freely available is Linux
Installation and Getting Started, by Matt Welsh.
Many GNU/Linux distributions are often available in computer stores or
bundled on CD-ROMs with books about Linux.
(There are three other freely available, Unix-like operating systems for
80386 and other systems: NetBSD, FreeBSD, and OpenBSD. All are based on the
4.4-Lite Berkeley Software Distribution, and they use recent versions
of gawk for their versions of awk.)
The Web page you are reading is actually free--at least, the
information in it is free to anyone. The machine-readable
source code for the Web page comes with gawk; anyone
may take this Web page to a copying machine and make as many
copies as they like. (Take a moment to check the Free Documentation
License in GNU Free Documentation License.)
Although you could just print it out yourself, bound books are much easier to read and use. Furthermore, the proceeds from sales of this book go back to the FSF to help fund development of more free software.
The Web page itself has gone through a number of previous editions.
Paul Rubin wrote the very first draft of The GAWK Manual;
it was around 40 pages in size.
Diane Close and Richard Stallman improved it, yielding a
version that was
around 90 pages long and barely described the original, "old"
version of awk.
I started working with that version in the fall of 1988.
As work on it progressed,
the FSF published several preliminary versions (numbered 0.x).
In 1996, Edition 1.0 was released with gawk 3.0.0.
The FSF published the first two editions under
the title The GNU Awk User's Guide.
This edition maintains the basic structure of Edition 1.0,
but with significant additional material, reflecting the host of new features
in gawk version 3.1.
Of particular note is
Sorting Array Values and Indices with gawk,
as well as
Using gawk's Bit Manipulation Functions,
Internationalization with gawk,
and also
Advanced Features of gawk,
and
Adding New Built-in Functions to gawk.
GAWK: Effective AWK Programming will undoubtedly continue to evolve.
An electronic version
comes with the gawk distribution from the FSF.
If you find an error in this Web page, please report it!
See Reporting Problems and Bugs, for information on submitting
problem reports electronically, or write to me in care of the publisher.
GNU stands for ``GNU's not Unix.''
The terminology ``GNU/Linux'' is explained in the Glossary.