V7 awk bug - (nf)

[liberte]

#R:utzoo:-366400:uiucdcs:8300001:000:751
uiucdcs!liberte    Mar 28 15:58:00 1984


We worked on figureing out what the bug might be on our Berkeley 4.1 and 4.2
and learned the following:  

on 4.1

- If you repeat the split(... line , it doesnt work in a different way and
comes up with some garbage.  If you repeat it again (three times) then it
works correctly.

- If you use a literal string instead of $2, it may work if another call
to split interferes in some way - an order dependency.  If you use a 
regular variable with a string value instead, it doesnt work in another way,
sometimes.

on 4.2

- Field variables seemed to work correctly, but the regular variable had
yet another different problem.  This version of awk includes a bug fix
from net.bugs.4bsd by sun!shannon, Dec 10, 1983

Daniel LaLiberte
(uiucdcs!liberte)