Newsgroups: comp.sys.next Path: utzoo!henry From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) Subject: Re: Bug in awk? Message-ID: <1990Oct2.161747.22804@zoo.toronto.edu> Organization: U of Toronto Zoology References: Date: Tue, 2 Oct 90 16:17:47 GMT In article burns@gatech.edu (James E. Burns) writes: >I have encountered what seems to be a bug in awk on the NeXT. ... >NeXT output: >14582641 2754258 204911 17541812 17541810 > >Correct output: >14582641 2754258 204911 17541810 17541810 > >This looks like an overflow problem, but I haven't been >able to pin it down. Does anyone know what is going on? Looks like some mental defective has compiled awk to use "float" rather than "double" for its numbers. I thought that went out with the pdp11. (On the 11 it made sense, because of limited address space.) Notice that trouble sets in once the numbers get too big for 24 bits, which is the size of an IEEE single-precision ("float" in C-speak :-)) mantissa. -- Imagine life with OS/360 the standard | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology operating system. Now think about X. | henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry