Re: awk - Read file inside script.

Quick update: 

I read a nice awk tutorial and part of the official gawk manual .. and I'm
quite sure now that the reason my script was hanging was that I didn't code an
exit statement at the end of my BEGIN stanza.. which means that since I was
running it as:

$ script

.. rather than:

$ script < input_file

It must have been waiting for me to feed him something from the keyboard.

For future reference - and even if I know zip about awk .. I strongly
recommend this excellent hands-on tutorial:

  http://www.grymoire.com/Unix/Awk.html

Takes about an hour to read, is very well-structured and clearly written ..
only briefly mentions the "/pattern/ {action}" feature that other tutorials
confuse you with extensively right from the start.. etc.

In my particular case, it gave me enough of a "feel" for awk programming that
with no forensic evidence I was able to figure out what my problem was. 

Thanks!

CJ