Re: [Gawkextlib-developer] Rework gawk-csv as gawk-csvio, and more

[Andrew J. S. <as...@te...>]

Hi,

Just to be clear -- I don't consider myself a gatekeeper. If you'd
like to contribute one or more packages, that's entirely up to you.

Now for my 2 cents, which you are free to disregard:

First, a question: why would gawkextlib need a CSV input parser if
core gawk has been enhanced to parse CSV files properly?
I suspect that you're going to say that this is because the core
gawk handling of CSV files has some shortcomings...

Second: my general impression is that people really dislike building
extension libraries from C code, so a pure gawk library may have a greater
chance of being used.

But you have a far better understanding of CSV issues than I do,
so I certainly defer to your judgement. IMO, you should do what makes
the most sense to you.

Best,
Andy

On Thu, Apr 20, 2023 at 07:42:09PM +0200, Manuel Collado wrote:
> After the long discussion on the gawk-devel mailinglist about gawk
> CSV support, I find my previous work on the gawk-csv extension
> (gawkextlib) and the csvmode.awk library (on my website)
> unnecessarily complicated.
> 
> So I've started to rework them as a very simplified CSV support. As
> either a CSV input parser (extension) or a pure gawk library, ready
> to be used.
> 
> Would it be Ok to have a gawkextlib project distributing more than
> one package? Say
> - gawk-csvio-ext.x.x.x.tar.gz, (input parser) and
> - gawk-csvio-lib.x.x.x.tar.gz  (pure gawk library alternative)
> 
> Users willing to compile sources could select the first, and lazy
> users could prefer the second, probably less efficient but
> effective.
> 
> The pure gawk library version can also be rewritten without any use
> of non-posix language extensions. So it could be also used with
> other awk processors (mawk, nawk, ..). In that case a third distro
> could be provided
> - awk-csvio-lib.x.x.x.tar.gz
> 
> If all that sounds reasonable, I'll provide details about their
> simple user interface and implementation details, to be discussed.
> 
> Regards.
> -- 
> Manuel Collado - http://mcollado.z15.es