READFILE(3am) GNU Awk Extension Modules READFILE(3am)
NAME
readfile - return the entire contents of a file as a string
SYNOPSIS
@load "readfile"
result = readfile("/some/path")
For making whole files be single records:
@load "readfile"
BEGIN { PROCINFO["readfile"] = 1 }
DESCRIPTION
The readfile extension adds a single function named readfile(). The ar-
gument is the name of the file to read. The return value is a string
containing the entire contents of the requested file.
Upon error, the function returns the empty string and sets ERRNO.
In addition, it adds an input parser that is activated if
PROCINFO["readfile"] exists. When activated, each input file is re-
turned in its entirety as $0. RT is set to the null string.
EXAMPLE
@load "readfile"
...
contents = readfile("/path/to/file");
if (contents == "" && ERRNO != "") {
print("problem reading file", ERRNO) > "/dev/stderr"
...
}
SEE ALSO
GAWK: Effective AWK Programming, filefuncs(3am), fnmatch(3am),
fork(3am), inplace(3am), ordchr(3am), readdir(3am), revoutput(3am),
rwarray(3am), time(3am).
AUTHOR
Arnold Robbins, arnold@skeeve.com.
COPYING PERMISSIONS
Copyright © 2012, 2013, 2014, 2018, Free Software Foundation, Inc.
Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this
manual page provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are
preserved on all copies.
Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this
manual page under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided that the
entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a per-
mission notice identical to this one.
Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations of this manual
page into another language, under the above conditions for modified ver-
sions, except that this permission notice may be stated in a translation
approved by the Foundation.
Free Software Foundation Feb 02 2018 READFILE(3am)
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