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Diffstat (limited to 'doc/gawk.texi')
| -rw-r--r-- | doc/gawk.texi | 18 |
1 files changed, 15 insertions, 3 deletions
diff --git a/doc/gawk.texi b/doc/gawk.texi index b210da10..e12de779 100644 --- a/doc/gawk.texi +++ b/doc/gawk.texi @@ -2076,6 +2076,10 @@ people. Notable code and documentation contributions were made by a number of people. @xref{Contributors}, for the full list. +Thanks to Patrice Dumas for the new @command{makeinfo} program. +Thanks to Karl Berry who continues to work to keep +the Texinfo markup language sane. + @cindex Kernighan, Brian I would like to thank Brian Kernighan for invaluable assistance during the testing and debugging of @command{gawk}, and for ongoing @@ -12376,7 +12380,9 @@ If those arguments are not supplied, the functions use a reasonable default value. @xref{Built-in}, for full details. If arguments are omitted in calls to user-defined functions, then those arguments are -treated as local variables and initialized to the empty string +treated as local variables. Such local variables act like the +empty string if referenced where a string value is required, +and like zero if referenced where a numeric value is required (@pxref{User-defined}). As an advanced feature, @command{gawk} provides indirect function calls, @@ -19057,15 +19063,21 @@ used as a variable, array, or function. @var{parameter-list} is an optional list of the function's arguments and local variable names, separated by commas. When the function is called, the argument names are used to hold the argument values given in -the call. The local variables are initialized to the empty string. +the call. + A function cannot have two parameters with the same name, nor may it have a parameter with the same name as the function itself. - In addition, according to the POSIX standard, function parameters cannot have the same name as one of the special built-in variables (@pxref{Built-in Variables}). Not all versions of @command{awk} enforce this restriction.) +Local variables act like the empty string if referenced where a string +value is required, and like zero if referenced where a numeric value +is required. This is the same as regular variables that have never been +assigned a value. (There is more to understand about local variables; +@pxref{Dynamic Typing}.) + The @var{body-of-function} consists of @command{awk} statements. It is the most important part of the definition, because it says what the function should actually @emph{do}. The argument names exist to give the body a |