awk regex number of repetition {n} doesn't work on mawk version 1.2

Question

Is there a workaround to be able to check for patterns of type

/[pattern]{n}/

where n is the number of repetitions in mawk version 1.2.

This is available in newer versions and with the GNU awk. I'll need this to work with the different versions of awk.

Answer 1

One of these MAY be what you want:

$ cat file
abcbcd
abcbcbcd

$ awk '/(bc){3}/' file
abcbcbcd

$ awk 'gsub(/bc/,"&")>=3' file
abcbcbcd

$ awk 'match($0,/bc/) && (n=RLENGTH) && match($0,/(bc)+/) && ((RLENGTH/n)>=3)' file
abcbcbcd

but without sample input and expected output we're just guessing.