C.4 Some Limitations of the Implementation

This following table describes limits of gawk on a Unix-like system (although it is variable even then). Other systems may have different limits.

ItemLimit
Characters in a character class2^(number of bits per byte)
Length of input record in bytesULONG_MAX
Length of output recordUnlimited
Length of source lineUnlimited
Number of fields in a recordULONG_MAX
Number of file redirectionsUnlimited
Number of input records in one fileMAX_LONG
Number of input records totalMAX_LONG
Number of pipe redirectionsmin(number of processes per user, number of open files)
Numeric valuesDouble-precision floating point (if not using MPFR)
Size of a field in bytesULONG_MAX
Size of a literal string in bytesULONG_MAX
Size of a printf string in bytesULONG_MAX