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, 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.