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How to change a file in-place using awk? (as with "sed -i")

When I follow the solution above, I get the following error on mac. How to find why it does not work on mac?

awk -i inplace '/hello/ { print "oh,", $0 }' file
awk: fatal: cannot open source file `inplace' for reading: No such file or directory

$ awk --version
GNU Awk 5.2.1, API 3.2, PMA Avon 8-g1, (GNU MPFR 4.1.0-p13, GNU MP 6.2.1)
Copyright (C) 1989, 1991-2022 Free Software Foundation.

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.

$ brew info gawk
==> gawk: stable 5.2.1 (bottled), HEAD
GNU awk utility
https://www.gnu.org/software/gawk/
Conflicts with:
  awk (because both install an `awk` executable)
/usr/local/Cellar/gawk/5.2.0 (98 files, 5.7MB)
  Poured from bottle on 2022-10-30 at 23:05:46
/usr/local/Cellar/gawk/5.2.1 (98 files, 5.8MB) *
  Poured from bottle on 2022-12-28 at 23:01:26
From: https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/blob/HEAD/Formula/gawk.rb
License: GPL-3.0-or-later
==> Dependencies
Required: gettext ✔, mpfr ✔, readline ✔
==> Options
--HEAD
    Install HEAD version
==> Analytics
install: 24,742 (30 days), 82,190 (90 days), 178,408 (365 days)
install-on-request: 20,593 (30 days), 67,741 (90 days), 135,672 (365 days)
build-error: 7 (30 days)
user1424739
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  • I can not reproduce this with `gawk` 5.2.1 installed from Homebrew on macOS Ventura 13.1 (`-i inplace` works as expected). You have some other issue. You appear to have two versions of `gawk` installed. You could possibly try uninstalling all versions of `gawk` and reinstalling the most recent one. – Kusalananda Dec 29 '22 at 06:07
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    are you using the actual binary from brew? Use it with absolute path and see if the error goes away – Alex Dec 29 '22 at 07:11
  • @Alex According to the output from `awk --version`, they are using the version from Homebrew. The native `awk` would respond with something like `awk version 20200816` (it's not GNU `awk`). – Kusalananda Dec 29 '22 at 08:47
  • `-i` for gawk is an instruction to include a library, the "inplace" library. If your gawk installation doesn't have that library for some reason, or doesn't know how to find libraries, then I could see you getting that error message. First check that your [AWKPATH](https://www.gnu.org/software/gawk/manual/gawk.html#AWKPATH-Variable) environment variable includes the directory where your libraries live and if you don't see anything obvious there then try reinstalling gawk. – Ed Morton Dec 29 '22 at 13:36
  • `AWKPATH` may not be set in your shell in which case awk uses a default value so to see the value your awk is using do `awk 'BEGIN{print ENVIRON["AWKPATH"]}'`. That should output something like `.:/usr/local/share/awk` so then you can do `ls /usr/local/share/awk` (but use the last path output in the previous step) and there you should see several library files including `inplace.awk` (it may not have the `.awk` extension). – Ed Morton Dec 29 '22 at 13:44
  • To investigate further, also look in `/usr/share/awk` and try hard-coding the path as `awk -i /usr/local/share/awk/inplace.awk ...` (wherever you find that file), but at the end of the day, unless you discover you're manually overwriting AWKPATH somewhere, I think you'll probably end up having to reinstall gawk. – Ed Morton Dec 29 '22 at 13:49
  • @EdMorton AWKPATH was not set. `$ ls -gGl /usr/local/share/awk lrwxr-xr-x 1 30 2022-12-28 23:01:26 /usr/local/share/awk -> ../Cellar/gawk/5.2.1/share/awk` So it seems that `brew info gawk` should add such information? – user1424739 Dec 29 '22 at 16:50
  • Are you saying that `AWKPATH` wasn't set in your shell (so, for example `echo "AWKPATH"` just printed a blank line) or that when you did what I instructed, `awk 'BEGIN{print ENVIRON["AWKPATH"]}'` **that** output just a blank line? The former wouldn't necessarily be a problem, the latter would be. Do you see `inplace.awk` in that directory you mentioned? idk what `brew info gawk` does but it doesn't sound to me like a command you'd use to install gawk, maybe just print some information about your installation? – Ed Morton Dec 29 '22 at 17:50
  • I am saying the former. echo "AWKPATH" is empty. `brew info gawk` should have provided some notes on setting up AWKPATH appropriately when needed. – user1424739 Dec 29 '22 at 17:54
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    As I said previously, `AWKPATH` in your shell might be empty and that could be fine as awk has an inbuilt default value, the way to print the value of `AWKPATH` that awk is using is exactly what I showed previously - `awk 'BEGIN{print ENVIRON["AWKPATH"]}'`. What does that command output and do you see a `inplace.awk` in that directory? You shouldn't need to set `AWKPATH`, just don't write any code that overwrites it (or any other shell environment variable). – Ed Morton Dec 29 '22 at 19:05
  • I see. The default `ENVIRON["AWKPATH"]` is `.:/usr/local/Cellar/gawk/5.2.1/share/awk` when the external env var AWKPATH is empty. However, when I set the external var AWKPATH to something, then `/usr/local/Cellar/gawk/5.2.1/share/awk` will be deleted in `ENVIRON["AWKPATH"]`. Shouldn't /usr/local/Cellar/gawk/5.2.1/share/awk be preserved no matter what external AWKPATH is? – user1424739 Dec 30 '22 at 02:28
  • @user1424739 no, that's like thinking the default `PATH` value should somehow still be present after you do `PATH=/foo/bar`. AWKPATH is just a plain old variable and if you set it to some value then that's what it is, end of story. Btw if you don't tag me in your comment with @EdMorton then I won't know you left one for me so YMMV with whether I ever see it or not. – Ed Morton Dec 30 '22 at 12:44
  • So, when you do `ls -l /usr/local/Cellar/gawk/5.2.1/share/awk`, do you see `inplace.awk` (with or without the `.awk` extension) or not? If so, does it have read permission for you? If not, can you find it with `find /usr/local/Cellar/gawk -name '*inplace*'`? – Ed Morton Dec 30 '22 at 12:46

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