Re: gawk: Locale-dependant bug with string to floating point conversion

[Paul Eggert]

Aharon Robbins <address@hidden> writes:

> Paul, it would help if you'd actually read the rest of that item:

I did.  You're correct in that the rest of that item makes it clear
that all integer-constants are decimal, because of (1), (2), and (3)
(quoted again below).  However, there's only one restriction about
floating-constants, namely (4), and this restriction does not outlaw
hexadecimal floating-constants.  Therefore, the 2004 POSIX awk spec
requires support for hexadecimal floating-constants.

Here's the chapter and verse again, for your convenience.

  The token NUMBER shall represent a numeric constant. Its form and numeric
  value shall be equivalent to either of the tokens floating-constant or
  integer-constant as specified by the ISO C standard, with the following
  exceptions:

    1. An integer constant cannot begin with 0x or include the hexadecimal
       digits 'a' , 'b' , 'c' , 'd' , 'e' , 'f' , 'A' , 'B' , 'C' , 'D' ,
       'E' , or 'F' .

    2. The value of an integer constant beginning with 0 shall be taken in
       decimal rather than octal.

    3. An integer constant cannot include a suffix ( 'u' , 'U' , 'l' ,
       or 'L' ).

    4. A floating constant cannot include a suffix ( 'f' , 'F' , 'l' ,
       or 'L' ).

  If the value is too large or too small to be representable (see Concepts
  Derived from the ISO C Standard ), the behavior is undefined.