gawk: Extracting
1
1 B.1.2 Extracting the Distribution
1 ---------------------------------
1
1 'gawk' is distributed as several 'tar' files compressed with different
1 compression programs: 'gzip', 'bzip2', and 'xz'. For simplicity, the
1 rest of these instructions assume you are using the one compressed with
1 the GNU Gzip program ('gzip').
1
1 Once you have the distribution (e.g., 'gawk-4.2.1.tar.gz'), use
1 'gzip' to expand the file and then use 'tar' to extract it. You can use
1 the following pipeline to produce the 'gawk' distribution:
1
1 gzip -d -c gawk-4.2.1.tar.gz | tar -xvpf -
1
1 On a system with GNU 'tar', you can let 'tar' do the decompression
1 for you:
1
1 tar -xvpzf gawk-4.2.1.tar.gz
1
1 Extracting the archive creates a directory named 'gawk-4.2.1' in the
1 current directory.
1
1 The distribution file name is of the form 'gawk-V.R.P.tar.gz'. The V
1 represents the major version of 'gawk', the R represents the current
1 release of version V, and the P represents a "patch level", meaning that
1 minor bugs have been fixed in the release. The current patch level is
1 1, but when retrieving distributions, you should get the version with
1 the highest version, release, and patch level. (Note, however, that
1 patch levels greater than or equal to 70 denote "beta" or nonproduction
1 software; you might not want to retrieve such a version unless you don't
1 mind experimenting.) If you are not on a Unix or GNU/Linux system, you
1 need to make other arrangements for getting and extracting the 'gawk'
1 distribution. You should consult a local expert.
1