gawk 3.1.3 and the floating point: is it a comma now?!?!?

[raffaele di stefano]

Hallo


I'm not sure this is a bug, but I can't find the proper option to 
switch from the default.
I refer to GNU Awk 3.1.3
that comes with SuSE Linux 9.1 (and that have 
identical bug also in the gawk that comes with 9.0)
I have a file (Stations_MasterList_v0.5.dat) set as follow:

   0  dgi    9.60668  40.31802   0.3540
   0 dgiz    9.60668  40.31802   0.3540
   1  fog   15.5513   41.4500    0.0000
   2  ovo   14.3967   40.8275    0.5840

I need to manipulate it with printf as follow:

cut -c5-39 Stations_MasterList_v0.5.dat |\
gawk '{printf "%4i%5s%10.4f%10.4f%10.4f\n", NR,$1,$2,$3,$4,$5}'

I was expcting an output like this
   1  dgi    9.6067   40.3180    0.3540
   2 dgiz    9.6067   40.3180    0.3540
   3  fog   15.5513   41.4500    0.0000
   4  ovo   14.3967   40.8275    0.5840

While I get:
   1  dgi    9,0000   40,0000    0,0000
   2 dgiz    9,0000   40,0000    0,0000
   3  fog   15,0000   41,0000    0,0000
   4  ovo   14,0000   40,0000    0,0000

I found a solution that opens the question!

cut -c5-39 Stations_MasterList_v0.5.dat | sed "s/\./\,/g" | \
gawk '{printf "%4i%5s%10.4f%10.4f%10.4f\n", NR,$1,$2,$3,$4,$5}' | \
sed "s/\,/\./g

That's to say that awk doesn't read floating points but floating ... 
commas ... And this is absolutely new and indeed a problem for me.
Final note: my SuSE is in italian. But this has never affected awk
in mathematical computation before!!
Help!
raffaele 

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