Wed Feb 18 11:39:29 AM IST 2026
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		* I * M * P * O * R * T * A * N * T *

This release includes a new regular expression matcher, MinRX, written
by Mike Haertel, the original author of GNU grep. It's available from
https://github.com/mikehaertel/minrx.

This matcher is fully POSIX compliant, which the current GNU matchers
are not. In particular it follows POSIX rules for finding the longest
leftmost submatches.  It is also more strict as to regular expression
syntax, but primarily in a few corner cases that normal, correct,
regular expression usage should not encounter.

Because regular expression matching is such a fundamental part of
awk/gawk, the original GNU matchers are still included in gawk.  In order
to use them, give a value to the GAWK_GNU_MATCHERS environment variable
before invoking gawk.

If you find a difference in behavior between the new and original
matchers, please report it. In particular if it adversely affects your
current application(s).  Note that if the difference is due to being fully
POSIX compliant, then you should consider revising your application.
Please use the gawkbug script to report any issues, as would be done
for any other bug. See node Bugs in the manual for more details; it's
online at https://www.gnu.org/software/gawk/manual/html_node/Bugs.html.

PLEASE NOTE! The original GNU matchers will eventually be removed from
gawk.  So, please take the time to notice and report any issues in the
MinRX matcher, so that they can be ironed out sooner rather than later.

Thanks!

Known Issues
============
When ignoring case, in locales where more than one lower-case
character maps to the same upper-case character, MinRX does
not currently do the right thing.  This is being worked on
and should be fixed in the first patch.