Gawk Bug in arrays?

[ghofulpo]

Hi, I'm using Gawk 3.1.8, and if I run this:

BEGIN {
    a[1] = "hi"
    if ( a[2] != "" ) print a[2]
    for ( inx in a )
    {
        print inx " " a[inx]
    }
}

I get:

bash-3.2$ gawk -f awkhate.awk
1 hi
2
bash-3.2$

The act of comparing a[2] (which should not exist) sets it to "".  I was 
mistakenly using this instead of a preferred:
if ( 2 in a )

However, I don't think that it should have behaved this way, regardless.