Re: is my loop issue a data conversion bug?

[arnold]

Peter,

The gawk doc discusses *how* numbers get converted to strings (and vice versa)
here:
https://www.gnu.org/software/gawk/manual/html_node/Strings-And-Numbers.html

Your confusion lies more with comparisons; the canonical rules are here:
https://www.gnu.org/software/gawk/manual/html_node/Variable-Typing.html

Here's what's going on.

First, remember than array indices always strings. When you write

        a[1] = 1

it's as if you wrote

        a["1"] = 1.

On to your program:

END     {
        for (len in words) { <---- len is always a string
                ....
                        for (i=1; i<=len; i++ ) { # lenn works, len does not

Consider what happens at the for(;;) loop.  The comparison is

        number <= string

This gets turned into

        string <= string

As seen here, this isn't what you want:

        $ gawk 'BEGIN { print ("89" < "9") }'
        1

Thus you must force len into being numeric by adding 0 to it.

I hope this helps.

Arnold