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https://github.com/ezrosent/frawk

an efficient awk-like language
https://github.com/ezrosent/frawk

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an efficient awk-like language

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README 

        
# frawk



*Note (2024, ezrosent@) While the [policy](https://github.com/ezrosent/frawk?tab=readme-ov-file#bugs-and-feature-requests)

on bugs and feature requests remains unchanged I've had much less time over the last 1-2 years to devote to bug fixes and

feature requests for frawk. Other awks are more actively maintained, and CSV support is now a much

more common feature in awk compared to when this project started; I'll update this notice if frawk's status changes.*



frawk is a small programming language for writing short programs processing

textual data. To a first approximation, it is an implementation of the

[AWK](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AWK) language; many common Awk programs

produce equivalent output when passed to frawk. You might be interested in frawk

if you want your scripts to handle escaped CSV/TSV like standard Awk fields, or

if you want your scripts to execute faster.



The info subdirectory has more in-depth information on frawk:



* [Overview](https://github.com/ezrosent/frawk/blob/master/info/overview.md):

  what frawk is all about, how it differs from Awk.

* [Types](https://github.com/ezrosent/frawk/blob/master/info/types.md): A

  quick gloss on frawk's approach to types and type inference.

* [Parallelism](https://github.com/ezrosent/frawk/blob/master/info/parallelism.md):

  An overview of frawk's parallelism support.

* [Benchmarks](https://github.com/ezrosent/frawk/blob/master/info/performance.md):

  A sense of the relative performance of frawk and other tools when processing

  large CSV or TSV files.

* [Builtin Functions Reference](https://github.com/ezrosent/frawk/blob/master/info/reference.md):

  A list of builtin functions implemented by frawk, including some that are new

  when compared with Awk.



frawk is dual-licensed under MIT or Apache 2.0.



## Installation



*Note: frawk uses some nightly-only Rust features by default.

Build [without the `unstable`](https://github.com/ezrosent/frawk#building-using-stable)

feature to build on stable.*  



You will need to [install Rust](https://rustup.rs/). If you have not updated rust in a while, 

run `rustup update nightly` (or `rustup update` if building using stable). If you would like

to use the LLVM backend, you will need an installation of LLVM 12 on your machine: 



* See [this site](https://apt.llvm.org/) for installation instructions on some debian-based Linux distros.

  See also the comments on [this issue](https://github.com/ezrosent/frawk/issues/63) for docker files that

  can be used to build a binary on Ubuntu.

* On Arch `pacman -Sy llvm llvm-libs` and a C compiler (e.g. `clang`) are sufficient as of September 2020.

* `brew install llvm@12` or similar seem to work on Mac OS.



Depending on where your package manager puts these libraries, you may need to

point `LLVM_SYS_120_PREFIX` at the llvm library installation (e.g.

`/usr/lib/llvm-12` on Linux or `/usr/local/opt/llvm@12` on Mac OS when installing llvm@12 via Homebrew).



### Building Without LLVM



While the LLVM backend is recommended, it is possible to build frawk only with

support for the Cranelift-based JIT and its bytecode interpreter. To do this,

build without the `llvm_backend` feature. The Cranelift backend provides

comparable performance to LLVM for smaller scripts, but LLVM's optimizations

can sometimes deliver a substantial performance boost over Cranelift (see the

[benchmarks](https://github.com/ezrosent/frawk/blob/master/info/performance.md)

document for some examples of this).



### Building Using Stable



frawk currently requires a nightly compiler by default. To compile frawk using stable,

compile without the `unstable` feature. Using `rustup default nightly`, or some other

method to run a nightly compiler release is otherwise required to build frawk.



### Building a Binary



With those prerequisites, cloning this repository and a `cargo build --release`

or `cargo [+nightly] install --path ` will produce a binary that you can

add to your `PATH` if you so choose:



```

$ cd 

# With LLVM

$ cargo +nightly install --path .

# Without LLVM, but with other recommended defaults

$ cargo +nightly install --path . --no-default-features --features use_jemalloc,allow_avx2,unstable

```



frawk is now on [crates.io](https://crates.io/crates/frawk), so running 

`cargo +nightly install frawk` with the desired features should also work.



While there are no _deliberate_ unix-isms in frawk, I have not tested it on Windows.

frawk does appear to build on Windows with default features disabled; see comments on [this issue](https://github.com/ezrosent/frawk/issues/87)

for more information.



## Bugs and Feature Requests



frawk has bugs, and many rough edges. If you notice a bug in frawk, filing an issue

with an explanation of how to reproduce the error would be very helpful. There are

no guarantees on response time or latency for a fix. No one works on frawk full-time.

The same policy holds for feature requests.