Re: unassigned/untyped behaviour

[arnold]

Hi.

"Andrew J. Schorr" <aschorr@telemetry-investments.com> wrote:

> > >           For example:
> > >
> > >                BEGIN {
> > >                    # creates a[1] but it has no assigned value
> > >                    a[1]
> > >                    print typeof(a[1])  # unassigned
> > >                }
> > >
> > > But in fact, that's not what the master branch produces:
> > 
> > That example is bad. I will fix the doc.
>
> On 2nd thought, I don't understand why the doc is wrong. Doesn't the statement
> "a[1]" actually instantiate a[1] as an unassigned scalar value?

No, it creates a[1] as an *untyped* value, neither array nor scalar.
"unassigned" IS scalar. "untyped" is neither fish nor fowl, until
we see how it gets used.

> In other words, is it proper to do this?
>
> gawk 'BEGIN {a[0]; a[0][1] = 5; print a[0][1]}'

Entirely proper, _because_ we don't know what a[0] is until
the second statement.

I may be able to have

        a[1]
        printf("%d", a[1])
        print typeof(a[1])

print "unassigned" instead of "numeric". That would make it
become exactly parallel to the scalar case:

        a
        printf("%d", a)
        print typeof(a)

I'm going to try it.

Thanks,

Arnold