Path: utzoo!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!mips!pacbell.com!att!att!cbnewsc!chapin
From: chapin@cbnewsc.att.com ( Tom Chapin )
Newsgroups: comp.editors
Subject: Re: Awk
Keywords: If you don't like vi,  then what about awk?  :-)
Message-ID: <1991Mar10.033934.13429@cbnewsc.att.com>
Date: 10 Mar 91 03:39:34 GMT
References: <17851@cgl.ucsf.EDU>
Distribution: na
Organization: Hickory Ridge - Lisle, IL
Lines: 28

Darwin Alonso writes:
>I have a question concerning what awk compares with the greater
>and less than operators (><). It seems to compare floating point numbers
>if the field is a number, but compares ASCII value (?) if the field
>is not a number.
>Is this intentional?

Yes.  Any expression can have both an ascii and a numerical value.
If both sides of a comparison have numerical values, the comparison
will be numeric, otherwise a string comparison will be made.

This default behavior can be modified by coercing the values:

	VARIABLE + 0	will coerce the expression to number
	VARIABLE ""	will coerce to string

If an apparent string is coerced to numeric, its numeric value
will be whatever number occurs before the first non-numeric
character in the string.  If none occur, the numeric value will
be zero.

>I couldn't find anything
>on this in the awk book (Aho, Kernigan, Weiberger).

Try pages 25-26 and pages 44-45.

-- 
     tom chapin                att!hrccb!tjc         tjc@hrccb.att.com