C.3 Adding New Built-in Functions to gawk

Danger Will Robinson! Danger!!
Warning! Warning!
The Robot

Beginning with gawk 3.1, it is possible to add new built-in functions to gawk using dynamically loaded libraries. This facility is available on systems (such as GNU/Linux) that support the dlopen and dlsym functions. This section describes how to write and use dynamically loaded extentions for gawk. Experience with programming in C or C++ is necessary when reading this section.

Caution: The facilities described in this section are very much subject to change in the next gawk release. Be aware that you may have to re-do everything, perhaps from scratch, upon the next release.

C.3.1 A Minimal Introduction to gawk Internals		A brief look at some gawk internals.
C.3.2 Directory and File Operation Built-ins		A example of new functions.