Re: [bug-gawk] Overflow to Infinity

[arnold]

"Andrew J. Schorr" <address@hidden> wrote:

> I'm not sure about the language lawyering on this topic. Perhaps one could
> argue that an exception should be made for ERANGE.
>
> With this patch, gawk does what you want (on my Linux system):

I am very in doubt whether this is the right change to make, since "inf"
is not recognized by [g]awk as a number.  That is, if you try to
read this data back in, you won't get the same values as used to
write it out.

There's some discussion of this in one of the appendices in the manual.

>From a "language lawyer" point of view, it's most definitely a can
of worms.

Thus my initial questions as to a citable source for what awk should
print in such cases.

Thanks Andy for the analysis.  I have to think about how to change
gawk, if at all.

Thanks,

Arnold