Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us> writes:
> OK, I reread the manual page:
> As each input record is read, gawk splits the record into
> fields, using the value of the FS variable as the field
> separator. If FS is a single character, fields are sepa-
> rated by that character. If FS is the null string, then
> each individual character becomes a separate field. Oth-
> erwise, FS is expected to be a full regular expression.
Hpmh. The HPUX man page for plain awk says
-F fs Specify regular expression used to separate fields. The default is to
recognizespace and tab characters, and to discard leading spaces and
tabs. If the -F option is used, leading input field separators are no longer discarded.
which makes me think we are treading on mighty thin ice here --- there
are lots of different versions of awk around, and some of them are
probably going to treat -F '.' as a regexp.
I'd suggest splitting the input with something more standardized.
Perhaps
sed 's/\./ /g' | $AWK '{printf ...
regards, tom lane