[BusyBox] Re: network enabled awk

[Rainer Weikusat]

castorpilot <castorpilot at gmail.com> writes:
> On 8/22/05, Rob Landley <rob at landley.net> wrote:
>> On Monday 22 August 2005 06:52, castorpilot wrote:
>> > hello,
>> > I am trying to add network capabilities to awk (ie gawk-like special
>> >  file /inet/protocol/lport/host/rport).
>> >  I don't really see why anybody else would need that, but do you think
>> >  this might be of any use ?
>> >
>> >  fred
>> 
>> *boggle*
>> 
>> 1) This is a gnu extension, isn't it?  (Did they network enable grep or sed?
>> How about dc?)
>
> This is gawk specific, so, yes, this is a gnu extension.
>
>> 2) What on _earth_ would this kind of thing be used for?
>
> Exactly my point, that's why I asked before !
> (In fact, the idea was to have some kind of a programming language on
> a busybox system, which could use the network. Since awk was already
> there, I decided to use it).

In a UNIX(*) or unix-like environment, open file descriptors are
inherited across a fork(2). This means that you can use a small
appplication that opens, say, a TCP connection, and use that from awk
without touching the awk code at all. Actually, you could use it from
any other application.