AWKPRETTY(1) Version 1.00 AWKPRETTY(1)
21 April 1999
NAME
awkpretty - prettyprint awk programs
SYNOPSIS
awkpretty [ -? ] [ -a ] [ -b ] [ -c nnn ]
[ -f awk-program-file ] [ -g ] [ -h ] [ -i nnn ]
[ -q ] [ -r ] [ -s ] [ -v ] [ -w nnn ]
[ -x nnn ] [ -y str ] [ -z str ]
[ awk-program-file(s) ] > new-awk-program-file
or
awkpretty [ --? ] [ --action-column nnn ]
[ --action-separator str ] [ --awklex-input ]
[ --blanks-only ] [ --comment-column nnn ]
[ --file awk-program-file ]
[ --function-separator str ] [ --globals ]
[ --help ] [ --indent nnn ]
[ --quick ] [ --reorder-functions ]
[ --standard-comments ] [ --version ]
[ --width nnn ]
[ awk-program-file(s) ] > new-awk-program-file
DESCRIPTION
awkpretty is a prettyprinter for awk(1) programs.
It uses awklex(1) to obtain a lexical token stream derived from a
grammatical analysis of the input file(s), and then outputs that
stream as an awk(1) program with standardized spacing and line breaks,
generally improving readability.
OPTIONS
awkpretty accepts two styles of options: the old, concise, but
possibly, inscrutable, UNIX hyphen-letter pairs, and longer
GNU/POSIX-style options beginning with two hyphens. The GNU/POSIX-
style options can be always abbreviated to any unique leading prefix,
and the two styles can be used interchangeably.
Options that take a value expect it as a separate following command-
line argument: use -w 72, not -w72.
-x nnn
--action-column nnn For the part of the input awk(1) program
corresponding to pattern {action} pairs, where
pattern may be empty, indent the {action} part
to begin after column nnn.
[Default: 16]
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-y str
--action-separator str
Normally, awkpretty separates pattern {action}
sections by two blank lines, to help set them
off from one another. This option can be used
to provide an alternate separator string, which
must consist exclusively of comments and/or
whitespace. Newlines in the string must be
represented by \n, and spaces by \s.
[Default: "\n\n\n"]
-a
--awklex-input Input is not awk program text, but rather, a
lexical token stream from awklex(1).
This option is provided for the convenience of
other tools that themselves process, or produce,
lexical token streams, allowing them to use
awkpretty as a backend filter to reconstruct awk
program text.
[Default: Input is awk program text]
-b
--blanks-only Use only blanks to provide needed whitespace in
the output.
[Default: use horizontal tabs and blanks,
because that is shorter, and also more likely to
preserve the intended text alignment when minor
edits are made]
-c nnn
--comment-column nnn Set the comment column to nnn. Inline comments
will then be lined up to start immediately after
that column, unless the line is too long, in
which case, they are moved to an otherwise empty
following line.
A zero value suppresses columnar alignment:
inline comments will be prefixed by only a
single tab.
[Default: 40]
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-f awk-program-file
--file awk-program-file
Specify the name of the file containing the
awk(1) program.
Multiple -f options can be used, if required;
their files are then treated as if logically
concatenated in the order that they were
specified.
The filename can be a hyphen, -, meaning that
input should be taken from stdin, allowing
awkpretty to be used in the middle of a command
pipeline.
-z str
--function-separator str
Normally, awkpretty separates output function
definitions by two blank lines, to help set them
off from one another. This option can be used
to provide an alternate separator string, which
must consist exclusively of comments and/or
whitespace. Newlines in the string must be
represented by \n, and spaces by \s.
[Default: "\n\n\n"]
-g
--globals Produce on stderr a sorted listing of function
names and global variables that they reference,
one such pair per line.
Because the awk programming language does not
have variable declarations, function-local
variables are conventionally created by
declaring them as additional arguments, unused
by callers. Failure to do so can result in a
nasty bug when an assignment to a supposedly
local variable in a function silently modifies a
global variable. This option provides a way to
detect such errors.
[Default: no list of global variables]
-?
-h
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--?
--help Print a brief help message, and exit immediately
with a success status code.
-i nnn
--indent nnn Set the statement level indentation increment to
nnn. Each logical increase in statement nesting
increases leading indentation by that amount.
Values outside the range 0 ... 8 will be reset
to the nearer endpoint of that range.
The choice between tabs-and-blanks, or just
blanks, for the leading indentation depends on
whether --blanks-only was specified or not.
[Default: 4]
-q
--quick Suppress reading of the user initialization
file, $HOME/.awkprettyrc. Normally, the
contents of that file, if it exists, are
implicitly inserted at the beginning the command
line, with comments removed and newlines
replaced by spaces. Thus, that file can contain
any awkpretty options defined in this
documentation, either one option, or
option/value pair, per line, or with multiple
options per line. Empty lines, and lines that
begin with optional whitespace followed by a
sharp (#) are comment lines that are discarded.
If the initialization file contains backslashes,
they must be doubled because the text is
interpreted by the shell before awkpretty sees
it.
-r
--reorder-functions Sort functions into alphabetical order, ignoring
lettercase.
In large programs, there is rarely any reason to
use any order of function definition other than
alphabetical, because that is the only order
that other human readers are sure to understand.
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[Default: leave functions in their original
order]
-s
--standard-comments Normally, awkpretty treats comments in one of
two ways: if they begin a line, their
indentation is preserved. Otherwise, they are
indented to a comment column which is settable
by the --comment-column option.
However, with this option, awkpretty converts
comments to a style found useful by decades of
practice in LISP programming: three or more
leading comment start characters (###) mean that
the comment must be flush left; doubled start
characters (##) mean that the comment must be
aligned at the current statement indentation; a
single start character (#) means that the
comment should be aligned at the default comment
column.
Comments that do not conform to these start
character conventions are modified as follows.
Comments that are found at beginning of line are
untabified, then adjusted to begin with three
start characters (###). Comments found indented
are untabified, and adjusted to begin with two
such characters (##). All other comments (those
following non-blank tokens) are adjusted to
begin with a single start character (#). The
comment is then output according to the
conventions described in the previous paragraph.
[Default: leave comments unmodified, though
possibly changed in indentation]
-v
--version Print the program version number, and exit
immediately with a success status code.
-w nnn
--width nnn Set the preferred maximum output line width to
nnn. Lines with excessively long tokens may
extend beyond this limit, since long tokens,
such as complete comment strings, are never
broken at line boundaries.
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A zero value of nnn is treated as `infinity',
effectively preserving line breaks from the
input file.
[Default: 80]
FILES
$HOME/.awkprettyrc
User initialization file containing customized awkpretty
command-line options.
@LIBDIR@/awkpretty.awk
awk(1) program invoked by awkpretty to filter the output of
awklex(1), and produce a prettyprinted program on stdout.
SEE ALSO
awk(1), awklex(1), awkunlex(1), gawk(1), mawk(1), nawk(1).
AUTHOR
Nelson H. F. Beebe
Center for Scientific Computing
University of Utah
Department of Mathematics, 322 INSCC
155 S 1400 E RM 233
Salt Lake City, UT 84112-0090
USA
Email: beebe@math.utah.edu, beebe@acm.org, beebe@ieee.org
WWW URL: http://www.math.utah.edu/~beebe
Telephone: +1 801 581 5254
FAX: +1 801 585 1640, +1 801 581 4148
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