gawk: Bug address
B.4.1 Submitting Bug Reports
----------------------------
Before reporting a bug, make sure you have really found a genuine bug.
First, verify that you have the latest version of 'gawk'. Many bugs
(usually subtle ones) are fixed at each release, and if yours is out of
date, the problem may already have been solved.
Second, please see if setting the environment variable 'LC_ALL' to
'LC_ALL=C' causes things to behave as you expect. If so, it's a locale
issue, and may or may not really be a bug.
Third, carefully reread the documentation and see if it says you can
do what you're trying to do. If it's not clear whether you should be
able to do something or not, report that too; it's a bug in the
documentation!
Finally, before reporting a bug or trying to fix it yourself, try to
isolate it to the smallest possible 'awk' program and input data file
that reproduce the problem. Then send us the program and data file,
some idea of what kind of Unix system you're using, the compiler you
used to compile 'gawk', and the exact results 'gawk' gave you. Also say
what you expected to occur; this helps us decide whether the problem is
really in the documentation.
Make sure to include the version number of 'gawk' you are using. You
can get this information with the command 'gawk --version'.
Once you have a precise problem description, send email to
<bug-gawk@gnu.org>.
The 'gawk' maintainers subscribe to this address, and thus they will
receive your bug report. Although you can send mail to the maintainers
directly, the bug reporting address is preferred because the email list
is archived at the GNU Project. _All email must be in English. This is
the only language understood in common by all the maintainers._ In
addition, please be sure to send all mail in _plain text_, not (or not
exclusively) in HTML.
NOTE: Many distributions of GNU/Linux and the various BSD-based
operating systems have their own bug reporting systems. If you
report a bug using your distribution's bug reporting system, you
should also send a copy to <bug-gawk@gnu.org>.
This is for two reasons. First, although some distributions
forward bug reports "upstream" to the GNU mailing list, many don't,
so there is a good chance that the 'gawk' maintainers won't even
see the bug report! Second, mail to the GNU list is archived, and
having everything at the GNU Project keeps things self-contained
and not dependent on other organizations.
Non-bug suggestions are always welcome as well. If you have
questions about things that are unclear in the documentation or are just
obscure features, ask on the bug list; we will try to help you out if we
can.
Info Catalog
gawk: Bugs
gawk: Usenet