gawk FS to split record into individual characters - awk

Question

If the field separator is the empty string, each character becomes a separate field
$ echo hello | awk -F '' -v OFS=, '{$1 = NF OFS $1} 1'
5,h,e,l,l,o
However, if FS is a regex that can possibly match zero times, the same behaviour does not occur:
$ echo hello | awk -F ' *' -v OFS=, '{$1 = NF OFS $1} 1'
1,hello
Anyone know why that is? I could not find anything in the gawk manual. Is FS="" just a special case?
I'm most interested in understanding why the 2nd case does not split the record into more fields. It's as if awk is treating FS=" *" like FS=" +"

Answer 1

Interesting question!
I just pulled gnu-awk 4.1.0's codes, I think the answer we could find in the file field.c.
line 371:
* re_parse_field --- parse fields using a regexp.
*
* This is called both from get_field() and from do_split()
* via (*parse_field)(). This variation is for when FS is a regular
* expression -- either user-defined or because RS=="" and FS==" "
*/
static long
re_parse_field(lo...
also this line: (line 425):
if (REEND(rp, scan) == RESTART(rp, scan)) { /* null match */
here is the case of <space>* matching in your question. The implementation didn't increment the nf, that is, it thinks the whole line is one single field. Note this function was used in do_split() function too.
First, if FS is null string, gawk separates each char into its own field. gawk's doc has clearly written this, also in codes, we could see:
line 613:
* null_parse_field --- each character is a separate field
*
* This is called both from get_field() and from do_split()
* via (*parse_field)(). This variation is for when FS is the null string.
*/
static long
null_parse_field(long up_to,
If the FS has single character, awk won't consider it as regex. This was mentioned in doc too. Also in codes:
#line 667
* sc_parse_field --- single character field separator
*
* This is called both from get_field() and from do_split()
* via (*parse_field)(). This variation is for when FS is a single character
* other than space.
*/
static long
sc_parse_field(l
if we read the function, no regex match handling was done there.
In the comments of the function re_parse_field(), and sc_parse_field(), we see do_split invokes them too. It explains why we have 1 in following command instead of 3:
kent$ echo "foo"|awk '{split($0,a,/ */);print length(a)}'
1
Note, to avoid to make the post too long, I didn't paste the complete codes here, we can find the codes here:
http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/gawk.git/

Answer 2

As was mentioned, an empty field separator generates undefined behavior; the same code will give different results on different platforms / flavors of awk. For example (all Mac OSX 10.8.5):
> echo hello | awk -F '' -v OFS=, '{$1 = NF OFS $1} 1'
awk: field separator FS is empty
1,hello
So awk complains, but keeps going.
Let's look at some other examples:
> echo hello | awk -F '.' -v OFS=, '{$1 = NF OFS $1} 1'
1,hello
A . by itself is not considered a regular expression
> echo hello | awk -F '[.]' -v OFS=, '{$1 = NF OFS $1} 1'
1,hello
Still nothing
> echo hello | awk -F '.?' -v OFS=, '{$1 = NF OFS $1} 1'
6,,,,,,
Now we have something like a regex: .? is "zero or one character". It is expanded to one character (which is consumed), so the output is "a whole lot of nothings"
> echo hello | awk -F '*' -v OFS=, '{$1 = NF OFS $1} 1'
1,hello
Not a regular expression
> echo hello | awk -F '.*' -v OFS=, '{$1 = NF OFS $1} 1'
2,,
A regular expression that consumes the entire thing
> echo hello | awk -F 'l' -v OFS=, '{$1 = NF OFS $1} 1'
3,he,,o
Match the letter l twice - two empty strings
> echo hello | awk -F 'ell' -v OFS=, '{$1 = NF OFS $1} 1'
2,h,o
Match all of ell at once
> echo hello | awk -F '.?|' -v OFS=, '{$1 = NF OFS $1} 1'
awk: illegal primary in regular expression .?| at
input record number 1, file
source line number 1
Attempt to be clever: sometimes an | with empty string on one side will match "anything" but awk's regex engine doesn't like it.
Conclusion - the regular expressions cannot match "empty", and whatever is matched is consumed. Attempts to use (?:.) or even (?=.) generate errors.

Answer 3

It seems to be a special case in gawk.
Traditionally, the behavior of FS equal to "" was not defined. In this
case, most versions of Unix awk simply treat the entire record as only
having one field. (d.c.) In compatibility mode (see Options), if FS is
the null string, then gawk also behaves this way.

Answer 4

What POSIX has to say about this:
If FS is a null string, the behavior is unspecified.
So the gawk behaviour is implementation-specific and sort of explains why your two examples don't yield the same output.

Answer 5

Another data point: gawk and perl disagree on how to do this:
$ perl -E '$,=","; $s="hello"; $r=qr( *); #s=split($r,$s); say scalar(#s), #s'
5,h,e,l,l,o
$ gawk 'BEGIN {s="hello";r=" *";n=split(s,a,r); print n,a[n]; if (s~r) print "match"}'
1 hello
match
$ gawk 'BEGIN {s="hello";r=""; n=split(s,a,r); print n,a[n]; if (s~r) print "match"}'
5 o
match