Editing PrintingNumbers

Use printf and a format string instead of print, some examples: {{{ awk BEGIN { printf "%f", 1000001.10 #prints 1000001.100000 printf "%.3f", 1000001.10 #prints 1000001.100 printf "%ld",1000001000000001} #prints 1000001000000001 } }}} For more information about printf see [[http://www.gnu.org/software/gawk/manual/html_node/Printf.html#Printf|the gnu awk manual]] But why does this happen in the first place? awk does something like printf using the format string in the variable OFMT, which contains %.6g by default, when it has to print a number: {{{ sh $ echo 12.123123124 | awk '{print $1;print $1+0;OFMT="%.5g";print $1+0;}' 12.123123124 # here it is printed as a string without conversion 12.1231 # same as printf "%.6g",$1 ($1+0 is a number) 12.123 # same as printf "%.5g",$1 }}} Take care that in this example $1 is considered as a string by default, while it would be considered as a number in a boolean expression see [[truth]] There is also another conversion that happens when a number is transformed into a string but not by print, this conversion is controlled by CONVFMT, which is also "%.6g" by default. {{{ sh $ echo 12.123123124 | awk '{CONVFMT="%.4g";print ($1+0);print ($1+0) ""}' 12.1231 # formatted by OFMT ie "%.6g" 12.12 # it's first converted to a string according to CONVFMT }}}

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This change is a minor edit.

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