field separators and filters

[Thomas Meller]

Hello together,

this is not the first time I stumble into this problem.
Neither books nor the official gnu guide could help me on that matter.
First of all: I am new to awk, learning from the official guide.

I want to filter all lines in a file beginning with a number between START and 
END.

Here is an example:

awk -v begin=1175290897 -v end=1175294497 'BEGIN { IFS=":" }
$1 <= end && $1 > begin { print $0 }' audit_archive.table


address@hidden insert]$ tail -4 audit_archive.table
1175294497: 2007/03/31::00:41:37~009997~2007/03/31::00:41:37.203...trash
1175294497: 2007/03/31::00:41:37~009998~2007/03/31::00:41:37.016...trash
1175294497: 2007/03/31::00:41:37~009999~2007/03/31::00:41:37.000...trash
1175294497: 2007/03/31::00:41:37~010000~2007/03/31::00:41:37.234...trash
address@hidden insert]$

Result: the lines above are not printed. '<=' seems to be handled like '<'. 
(same seems to be for '>=')

I tried some things and found that if the number from the file contains a ':', 
i.e. the field separator, and this colon is contained in '$1', then gawk 
behaves exactly like this case. (in another case I forgot to specify IFS -> 
same result)

A workaround would be to increase the filter criteria by one, but that stinks!

Where is the bug? In front of the keyboard or behind it?
Version is gawk-3.1.3-10.1.
Used on Redhat EL 4

I already tried some lot to specify 'begin' and 'end' quoted, unqouted, inside 
the BEGIN section and all other combinations. The result keeps the same all the 
time.

Lines containing 1175294496: are printed, those with 1175294497: not.

THX alot. Documentation about awk is rare nowadays.

Tom
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