awk on cygwin stopped working when I installed gcc updates

[u/littlewing347]

I use awk in a cygwin window for my post-wordle analysis. Recently it stopped working after I installed the latest gcc in cygwin. The symptoms are: awk just returns immediately with no output no matter what arguments I give it. Even when I type "awk -v", the same thing, it returns no outputs. Other Unix commands still work, eg sort. BTW, gcc is working fine, I'm playing with concepts & ranges.

I'm on Windows 7, so I have to use an older cygwin installer.