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A numeric constant stands for a number. This number can be an integer, a decimal fraction, or a number in scientific (exponential) notation.30 Here are some examples of numeric constants that all have the same value:
105 1.05e+2 1050e-1
A string constant consists of a sequence of characters enclosed in double quotation marks. For example:
"parrot"
represents the string whose contents are ‘parrot’. Strings in
gawk
can be of any length, and they can contain any of the possible
eight-bit ASCII characters, including ASCII NUL (character code zero).
Other awk
implementations may have difficulty with some character codes.
Some languages allow you to continue long strings across multiple lines by ending the line with a backslash. For example in C:
#include <stdio.h> int main() { printf("hello, \ world\n"); return 0; }
In such a case, the C compiler removes both the backslash and the newline, producing a string as if it had been typed ‘"hello, world\n"’. This is useful when a single string needs to contain a large amount of text.
The POSIX standard says explicitly that newlines are not allowed inside string
constants. And indeed, all awk
implementations report an error
if you try to do so. For example:
$ gawk 'BEGIN { print "hello, > world" }' -| gawk: cmd. line:1: BEGIN { print "hello, -| gawk: cmd. line:1: ^ unterminated string -| gawk: cmd. line:1: BEGIN { print "hello, -| gawk: cmd. line:1: ^ syntax error
Although POSIX doesn’t define what happens if you use an escaped
newline, as in the previous C example, all known versions of
awk
allow you to do so. Unfortunately, what each one
does with such a string varies. (d.c.) gawk
,
mawk
, and the OpenSolaris POSIX awk
(see section Other Freely Available awk
Implementations) elide the backslash and newline, as in C:
$ gawk 'BEGIN { print "hello, \ > world" }' -| hello, world
In POSIX mode (see section Command-Line Options), gawk
does not
allow escaped newlines. Otherwise, it behaves as just described.
Brian Kernighan’s awk
and BusyBox awk
remove the backslash but leave the newline
intact, as part of the string:
$ nawk 'BEGIN { print "hello, \ > world" }' -| hello, -| world
The internal representation of all numbers,
including integers, uses double-precision floating-point numbers.
On most modern systems, these are in IEEE 754 standard format.
See section Arithmetic and Arbitrary-Precision Arithmetic with gawk
, for much more information.
Next: Nondecimal-numbers, Up: Constants [Contents][Index]