Re: gawk number to string bug

[Andrew J. Schorr]

On Sun, Dec 25, 2005 at 08:19:59AM +0200, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> > From: =?UTF-8?B?SsO8cmdlbiBLYWhycw==?=
> >  <address@hidden>
> > Date: Sat, 24 Dec 2005 21:35:32 +0100
> > Cc: 
> > 
> > Here is an old version which is still online:
> > 
> > http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/007908799/xcu/awk.html
> 
> Thanks.  This says that printf should behave as it does in C, with
> minor exceptions (which, AFAICS, are not relevant to this thread).  It
> also says that integral values should be output as if formatted with
> %d, so %.0f is not a good idea, I think.

There is a newer version of the spec here:

   http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/utilities/awk.html

Also, in my opinion, this language:

   A numeric value that is exactly equal to the value of an integer (see
   Concepts Derived from the ISO C Standard) shall be converted to a string by
   the equivalent of a call to the sprintf function (see String Functions) with
   the string "%d" as the fmt argument and the numeric value being converted as
   the first and only expr argument.

refers to the situation where a numeric (integer) value is being
converted to a string (perhaps by print, printf "%s", or by context).
I do not believe it refers to the explicit case where it is passed
as an argument to printf (or sprintf) "%d".  (Note that it is
discussing general conversion to a string, not explicit printf
formatting with "%d").

Anyway, I still do not see anything that addresses how to format
a numeric value with "%d" when the numeric value overflows the
standard integer type.  I still think that using "%.0f" in
this case gives more predictable and consistent behavior than
falling back to "%g" (with a possible warning message if --lint
is enabled).

Regards,
Andy