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From: Ben Bacarisse <ben@bsb.me.uk>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.awk
Subject: Re: {} Questions
Date: Wed, 21 Aug 2024 09:06:51 +0100
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porkchop@invalid.foo (Mike Sanders) writes:

> Assuming any awk variant...
>
> 1. Is this valid? (it works with mawk, gawk, busy box awk)
>
>    BEGIN { debug = 1 }
>
>    (debug)  { code_here }
>
>    (!debug) { code_here }
>
>    END { ... }

Yes, that's valid.  You don't need the ()s round the expressions.

> 2. what is the name or accepted term in AWK for unamed functions,
> main()?

I don't know what you mean.  Can you give an example?

It occurs to me that maybe you think

  (debug) { code }

is a function?  It's not.  It's just a normal pattern/action AWK pair.
An AWK pattern can just be an expression.  That expression is evaluated
for every input line and, if true, the corresponding action is executed.
You could have written

  debug != 0 { code }

instead.

-- 
Ben.