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There are times when you may want to examine each character
of a record separately. This can be done in @command{gawk} by
simply assigning the null string ("") to FS. In this case,
each individual character in the record becomes a separate field.
For example:
$ echo a b | gawk 'BEGIN { FS = "" }
> {
> for (i = 1; i <= NF; i = i + 1)
> print "Field", i, "is", $i
> }'
-| Field 1 is a
-| Field 2 is
-| Field 3 is b
Traditionally, the behavior of FS equal to "" was not defined.
In this case, most versions of Unix @command{awk} simply treat the entire record
as only having one field.
(d.c.)
In compatibility mode
(see section Command-Line Options),
if FS is the null string, then @command{gawk} also
behaves this way.
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