[bug-gawk] Why strings extracted by match() can be considered as numbers?

[Peng Yu]

The following example shows that strings extracted by match() can be
considered as numbers. This automatic conversion is not natural to me.

$ cat main.sh
#!/usr/bin/env bash
# vim: set noexpandtab tabstop=2:

set -v
seq 10 | awk -e 'BEGIN { match("8", /([0-9]+)/, a) } $1 > a[1] { print }'
seq 10 | awk -e 'BEGIN { a[1] = "8" } $1 > a[1] { print }'
$ ./main.sh
seq 10 | awk -e 'BEGIN { match("8", /([0-9]+)/, a) } $1 > a[1] { print }'
9
10
seq 10 | awk -e 'BEGIN { a[1] = "8" } $1 > a[1] { print }'
9

Based on the manpage, it seems that the results should only be
considered as strings. Why there is such a discrepancy? Thanks.

       match(s, r [, a])       Return the position in s where the
regular expression r  occurs,  or  zero  if  r  is  not
                               present,  and  set  the values of
RSTART and RLENGTH.  Note that the argument order is the
                               same as for the ~ operator: str ~ re.
If array a is provided, a is cleared and then  ele-
                               ments 1 through n are filled with the
portions of s that match the corresponding parenthe-
                               sized subexpression in r.  The zero'th
element of a contains the portion of s  matched  by
                               the entire regular expression r.
Subscripts a[n, "start"], and a[n, "length"] provide the
                               starting index in the string and length
respectively, of each matching substring.


-- 
Regards,
Peng