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

[Paul Eggert]

Aharon Robbins <address@hidden> writes:

> A request for clarification should be filed, since I can't believe that
> they purposely intended to allow hexadecimal floating point numbers.

Yes, on further review the current spec is inconsistent and one could
argue that hexadecimals were not intended.  I'd rather see them
supported, though, as it's a much simpler fix to the standard, leads
to a more-consistent system overall, and adds desirable functionality
to "awk".

To help clear things up I filed a defect report with the POSIX folks,
which you can find here:

http://www.opengroup.org/sophocles/show_mail.tpl?source=L&listname=austin-review-l&id=1783

Your further comments are of course welcome.  Please see the following
URL for how to discuss the defect report:

http://www.opengroup.org/austin/lists.html