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gawkinet: Using Networking

 
 2 Networking With 'gawk'
 ************************
 
 The 'awk' programming language was originally developed as a
 pattern-matching language for writing short programs to perform data
 manipulation tasks.  'awk''s strength is the manipulation of textual
 data that is stored in files.  It was never meant to be used for
 networking purposes.  To exploit its features in a networking context,
 it's necessary to use an access mode for network connections that
 resembles the access of files as closely as possible.
 
    'awk' is also meant to be a prototyping language.  It is used to
 demonstrate feasibility and to play with features and user interfaces.
 This can be done with file-like handling of network connections.  'gawk'
 trades the lack of many of the advanced features of the TCP/IP family of
 protocols for the convenience of simple connection handling.  The
 advanced features are available when programming in C or Perl.  In fact,
 the network programming in this major node is very similar to what is
 described in books such as 'Internet Programming with Python', 'Advanced
 Perl Programming', or 'Web Client Programming with Perl'.
 
    However, you can do the programming here without first having to
 learn object-oriented ideology; underlying languages such as Tcl/Tk,
 Perl, Python; or all of the libraries necessary to extend these
 languages before they are ready for the Internet.
 
    This major node demonstrates how to use the TCP protocol.  The UDP
 protocol is much less important for most users.

Menu

 
· Gawk Special Files          How to do 'gawk' networking.
· TCP Connecting              Making a TCP connection.
· Troubleshooting             Troubleshooting TCP/IP connections.
· Interacting                 Interacting with a service.
· Setting Up                  Setting up a service.
· Email                       Reading email.
· Web page                    Reading a Web page.
· Primitive Service           A primitive Web service.
· Interacting Service         A Web service with interaction.
· Simple Server               A simple Web server.
· Caveats                     Network programming caveats.
· Challenges                  Where to go from here.
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