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Diffstat (limited to 'doc/gawk.texi')
| -rw-r--r-- | doc/gawk.texi | 21 |
1 files changed, 17 insertions, 4 deletions
diff --git a/doc/gawk.texi b/doc/gawk.texi index 80f8528d..d23b2128 100644 --- a/doc/gawk.texi +++ b/doc/gawk.texi @@ -20344,10 +20344,23 @@ Remember that you must supply a leading @samp{@@} in front of an indirect functi Starting with @value{PVERSION} 4.1.2 of @command{gawk}, indirect function calls may also be used with built-in functions and with extension functions -(@pxref{Dynamic Extensions}). The only thing you cannot do is pass a regular -expression constant to a built-in function through an indirect function -call.@footnote{This may change in a future version; recheck the documentation that -comes with your version of @command{gawk} to see if it has.} +(@pxref{Dynamic Extensions}). There are some limitations when calling +built-in functions indirectly, as follows. + +@itemize @value{BULLET} +@item +You cannot pass a regular expression constant to a built-in function +through an indirect function call.@footnote{This may change in a future +version; recheck the documentation that comes with your version of +@command{gawk} to see if it has.} This applies to the @code{sub()}, +@code{gsub()}, @code{gensub()}, @code{match()}, @code{split()} and +@code{patsplit()} functions. + +@item +If calling @code{sub()} or @code{gsub()}, you may only pass two arguments, +since those functions are unusual in that they update their third argument. +This means that @code{$0} will be updated. +@end itemize @command{gawk} does its best to make indirect function calls efficient. For example, in the following case: |