Thu May 9 15:31:55 IDT 2013 ============================ There were too many files tracking different thoughts and ideas for things to do, or consider doing. This file merges them into one. As tasks are completed, they should be moved to the DONE section, below, or simply removed. Upon creation of a release (major or patch release), items from the previous release should be removed. TODO ==== Minor Cleanups and Code Improvements ------------------------------------ API: ??? #if !defined(GAWK) && !defined(GAWK_OMIT_CONVENIENCE_MACROS) ?? Add debugger commands to reference card Look at function order within files. regex.h - remove underscores in param names Consider removing use of and/or need for the protos.h file. Review the bash source script for working with shared libraries in order to nuke the use of libtool. Enhance profiling to same comments in a byte-code that does nothing but that can be used when pretty printing the program. Minor New Features ------------------ Enhance extension/fork.c waitpid to allow the caller to specify the options. And add an optional array argument to wait and waitpid in which to return exit status information. Add a readfile() function in awk from mail. Make writes to ENVIRON / deletions affect the real environment using setenv / unsetenv. Consider relaxing the strictness of --posix. ? Add an optional base to strtonum, allowing 2-36. ? Optional third argument for index indicating where to start the search. Major New Features ------------------ Think about how to generalize indirect access. Manuel Collado suggests things like foo = 5 @"foo" += 4 Also needed: indirect calls of built-ins indirect calls of extension functions indirect through array elements, not just scalar variables Fix the early chapters in the doc with more up-to-date examples. No-one uses Bulletin Board Systems anymore. Rework management of array index storage. (Partially DONE.) Consider using an atom table for all string array indices. DBM storage of awk arrays. Try to allow multiple dbm packages. ?? Some way to make regexp constants first class citizens - Assign to variables - Pass to functions ?? A RECLEN variable for fixed-length record input. PROCINFO["RS"] would be "RS" or "RECLEN" depending upon what's in use. *** Could be done as an extension? ?? Use a new or improved dfa and/or regex library. Things To Think About That May Never Happen ------------------------------------------- Consider making shadowed variables a warning and not a fatal warning when --lint=fatal. Similar for extra parameters in a function call. ?? Scope IDs for IPv6 addresses ?? ??? Gnulib Look at code coverage tools, like S2E: https://s2e.epfl.ch/ Try running with diehard. See http://www.diehard-software.org, https://github.com/emeryberger/DieHard Change from dlopen to using the libltdl library (i.e. lt_dlopen). This may support more platforms. FIX regular field splitting to use FPAT algorithm. Note: Looked at this. Not sure it's with the trouble: If it ain't broke... Implement namespaces. Arnold suggested the following in an email: - Extend the definition of an 'identifier' to include "." as a valid character although an identifier can't start with it. - Extension libraries install functions and global variables with names that have a "." in them: XML.parse(), XML.name, whatever. - Awk code can read/write such variables and call such functions, but they cannot define such functions function XML.foo() { .. } # error or create a variable with such a name if it doesn't exist. This would be a run-time error, not a parse-time error. - This last rule may be too restrictive. I don't want to get into fancy rules a la perl and file-scope visibility etc, I'd like to keep things simple. But how we design this is going to be very important. Include a sample rpm spec file in a new packaging subdirectory. Patch lexer for @include and @load to make quotes optional. Do an optimization pass over parse tree? Consider integrating Fred Fish's DBUG library into gawk. Make awk '/foo/' files... run at egrep speeds (how?) ? Have strftime() pay attention to the value of ENVIRON["TZ"] Add a lint check if the return value of a function is used but the function did not supply a value. Consider making gawk output +nan for NaN values so that it will accept its own output as input. NOTE: Investigated this. GLIBC formats NaN as '-nan' and -NaN as 'nan'. Dealing with this is not simple. Enhance FIELDWIDTHS with some way to indicate "the rest of the record". E.g., a length of 0 or -1 or something. Maybe "n"? Make FIELDWIDTHS be an array? Code Review ----------- awkgram.y debug.c eval.c ext.c field.c floatcomp.c floatmagic.h gawkmisc.c profile.c protos.h DONE ==== Minor Cleanups and Code Improvements ------------------------------------ Done in 4.1: Review all FIXME and TODO comments Fix all *assoc_lookup() = xxx calls. Make GAWKDEBUG pass the test suite. Make fflush() and fflush("") both flush all files, as in BWK awk. In gawkapi.c - review switch statements and use of default. API: awk_true and awk_false Update doc to use gcc -o filefuncs.so -shared filefuncs.o instead of ld ... Have check for name not rely on isalpha, isalnum since the locale could botch that up. Also make it not fatal. Minor New Features ------------------ Done in 4.1: Merge the chapter and the appendix on floating-point math (for 4.1). Major New Features ------------------ Done in 4.1: Integration of array_iface branch. Design and implement I/O plugin API. Implement designed API for loadable modules Redo the loadable modules interface from the awk level. xgawk features (@load, -l, others) Merge gawk/pgawk/dgawk into one executable Merge xmlgawk XML extensions (via source forge project that works with new API) Integrate MPFR to provide high precision arithmetic. Consider really implementing BWK awk SYMTAB for seeing what global variables are defined. Things That We Decided We Will Never Do --------------------------------------- Consider moving var_value info into Node_var itself to reduce memory usage. This would break all uses of get_lhs in the code. It's too sweeping a change. Add macros for working with flags instead of using & and | directly. Code Review ----------- array.c awk.h builtin.c cmd.h command.y custom.h hard-locale.h io.c main.c mbsupport.h msg.c node.c re.c replace.c version.c xalloc.h