NAME

       readfile - return the entire contents of a file as a string

SYNOPSIS

       @load "readfile"

       result = readfile("/some/path")

       For making whole files be single records:

       @load "readfile"
       BEGIN { PROCINFO["readfile"] = 1 }

DESCRIPTION

       The  readfile extension adds a single function named readfile().  The argument is the name of the file to
       read.  The return value is a string containing the entire contents of the requested file.

       Upon error, the function returns the empty string and sets ERRNO.

       In addition, it adds an input parser that is activated if PROCINFO["readfile"] exists.   When  activated,
       each input file is returned in its entirety as $0.  RT is set to the null string.

EXAMPLE

       @load "readfile"
       ...
       contents = readfile("/path/to/file");
       if (contents == "" && ERRNO != "") {
           print("problem reading file", ERRNO) > "/dev/stderr"
           ...
       }

SEE ALSO

       GAWK:  Effective  AWK  Programming,  filefuncs(3am),  fnmatch(3am), fork(3am), inplace(3am), ordchr(3am),
       readdir(3am), revoutput(3am), rwarray(3am), time(3am).

AUTHOR

       Arnold Robbins, arnold@skeeve.com.

COPYING PERMISSIONS

       Copyright © 2012, 2013, 2014, 2018, Free Software Foundation, Inc.

       Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this manual page provided  the  copyright
       notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies.

       Permission  is  granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this manual page under the conditions
       for verbatim copying, provided that the entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a
       permission notice identical to this one.

       Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations of this  manual  page  into  another  language,
       under  the  above conditions for modified versions, except that this permission notice may be stated in a
       translation approved by the Foundation.

Free Software Foundation                           Feb 02 2018                                     READFILE(3am)