READFILE(3am)

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

SYNOPSIS
@load "readfile"

result = readfile("/some/path")

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.

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, Free Software Foundation, Inc.

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