Linux in a Nutshell, 6th Edition

Implementation Limits

Many versions of awk have various implementation limits, on things such as:

• Number of fields per record

• Number of characters per input record

• Number of characters per output record

• Number of characters per field

• Number of characters per printf string

• Number of characters in literal string

• Number of characters in character class

• Number of files open

• Number of pipes open

• The ability to handle 8-bit characters and characters that are all zero (ASCII NUL)

gawk does not have limits on any of the above items, other than those imposed by the machine architecture and/or the operating system.