Martin Gregorie  wrote:
> In Raspbian Buster the binary is /usr/bin/mawk with awk and nawk as
> aliases

Not here, or did you not mean aliases to mawk? It's /usr/bin/awk ->
/etc/alternatives/awk -> /usr/bin/gawk. /usr/bin/mawk is a separate binary
with these properties:

$ /usr/bin/mawk -W version
mawk 1.3.3 Nov 1996, Copyright (C) Michael D. Brennan

compiled limits:
max NF             32767
sprintf buffer      1020

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