gawk is distributed as a tar file compressed with the
GNU Zip program, gzip.
Once you have the distribution (for example,
gawk-3.1.4.tar.gz),
use gzip to expand the
file and then use tar to extract it. You can use the following
pipeline to produce the gawk distribution:
# Under System V, add 'o' to the tar options
gzip -d -c gawk-3.1.4.tar.gz | tar -xvpf -
This creates a directory named gawk-3.1.4 in the current directory.
The distribution file name is of the form gawk-V.R.P.tar.gz. The V represents the major version of gawk, the R represents the current release of version V, and the P represents a patch level, meaning that minor bugs have been fixed in the release. The current patch level is 4, but when retrieving distributions, you should get the version with the highest version, release, and patch level. (Note, however, that patch levels greater than or equal to 80 denote “beta” or nonproduction software; you might not want to retrieve such a version unless you don't mind experimenting.) If you are not on a Unix system, you need to make other arrangements for getting and extracting the gawk distribution. You should consult a local expert.