A.2 Changes Between SVR3.1 and SVR4

The System V Release 4 (1989) version of Unix awk added these features (some of which originated in gawk):

• The ENVIRON array (see section Built-in Variables).
• Multiple ‘-f’ options on the command line (see section Command-Line Options).
• The ‘-v’ option for assigning variables before program execution begins (see section Command-Line Options).
• The ‘--’ option for terminating command-line options.
• The ‘\a’, ‘\v’, and ‘\x’ escape sequences (see section Escape Sequences).
• A defined return value for the srand() built-in function (see section Numeric Functions).
• The toupper() and tolower() built-in string functions for case translation (see section String-Manipulation Functions).
• A cleaner specification for the ‘%c’ format-control letter in the printf function (see section Format-Control Letters).
• The ability to dynamically pass the field width and precision ("%*.*d") in the argument list of the printf function (see section Format-Control Letters).
• The use of regexp constants, such as /foo/, as expressions, where they are equivalent to using the matching operator, as in ‘$0 ~ /foo/’ (see section Using Regular Expression Constants).
• Processing of escape sequences inside command-line variable assignments (see section Assigning Variables on the Command Line).