asorti() comparison

[EXCOFFIER, Denis (CS SYSTEMES INFORMATION)]

Hello,

I use GNU Awk 3.1.5. My system type is sparc-sun-solaris2.8.

I run gawk -f foo.awk and i get the result `ajbcdefghi'.
I would have expected the result `abcdefghij'.

I expected that the array created by split() should have the
STRNUM attribute and be sorted (for asorti purpose) with numeric
comparison. In fact, asorti() puts the indice 10 between 1 and 2: this
is string comparison.


--foo.awk---------------------
BEGIN {
  s = "abcdefghij";
  split(s, a, "");
  n = asorti(a, b);
  for ( i = 1 ; i <= n ; i++ ) {
    printf("%s", a[b[i]]);
  };
  printf("\n");
}
------------------------------

See also, from the documentation:

7.11 Sorting Array Values and Indices with `gawk'
=================================================
... The comparison of array elements is done using `gawk''s usual
comparison rules (*note Typing and Comparison::)...

8.1.3 String-Manipulation Functions
===================================
... As array indices are always strings, the comparison performed is
always a string comparison. ...

5.10 Variable Typing and Comparison Expressions
===============================================
... and the elements of an array created by `split' that are
numeric strings have the STRNUM attribute. ...

When two operands are compared, either string comparison or numeric
comparison may be used. This depends upon the attributes of the
operands, according to the following symmetric matrix:

             +---------------------------------------------
             |       STRING          NUMERIC         STRNUM
     -------+---------------------------------------------
             |
     STRING  |       string          string          string
             |
     NUMERIC |       string          numeric         numeric
             |
     STRNUM  |       string          numeric         numeric
     -------+---------------------------------------------

 
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