The first edition was published in 1988, and is available at:
* https://archive.org/details/pdfy-MgN0H1joIoDVoIC7
* Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13451454
Awk could use improvement in numerous areas. Oh, for instance, you can pass associative arrays into functions, but not return them. Functions that filter array to array have to take an output array parameter.
Using extra parameters as the only way to get local variables is also a smell.
a[i] syntax cannot index into strings, what the hell?
Of course he could have died since, but as others noted, he hasn't.