If I want to know the version of awk I get the following:
$ awk --version
awk: not an option: --version
Checking in man awk I see that my awk is
mawk - pattern scanning and text processing language
2 Answers
In this case, man awk shows us:
-W version
mawk writes its version and copyright to stdout and compiled limits to stderr and exits 0.
In my case,
$ awk -W version
mawk 1.3.3 Nov 1996, Copyright (C) Michael D. Brennan
compiled limits:
max NF 32767
sprintf buffer 2040
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1my version is showing 2020 January and it still wouldn't support
-vor--versionon Linux. On the Mac, it is showing a 2007 version but it supports--version. I supposeawkis important enough that they can do whatever they want, and it is coherent with what I feel at work: if you are easy, you get looked down and stepped on. If you are difficult, you get respected Dec 17, 2020 at 0:55 -
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I check my Big Sur (on M1) again, and it showed
20200816The one that showed 2007 was Mojave. The one that needed the-Wwas showingmawkDec 17, 2020 at 16:37
I try to be more general.
awk -Wversion 2>/dev/null || awk --version
works whether awk invokes mawk, gawk or original-awk available for Debian/Ubuntu Linux. Note that -W and version have to be concatenated so that original-awk does not think version is a program.
In Ubuntu Linux you can use sudo update-alternatives --config awk to see and to choose the implementation that is invoked by the command awk.
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I don't know how standard it is to accept the concatenated option, but it is not necessary use it in my experience:
awk -W version </dev/null 2>/dev/null|awk '{print $0;nz=1}END{if(!nz)exit 1}' || awk --versionor alternatively(s=$(awk -W version </dev/null 2>/dev/null); if [ -n "$s" ]; then printf "$s\n"; else awk --version; fi)– jarnoSep 5, 2015 at 16:39
mawk, hence the inexistence ofversion.