Re: [Groff] Bug report: interaction between tbl and string variables

[Werner LEMBERG]

> > It's something to do with tbl not correctly copying the whole
> > string register name into the troff output.

Indeed.  tbl sees that you want to format a numeric field, but you
don't give numbers but string registers.  To align numbers on the
decimal point it has to interpret the number since this must be done
by tbl itself, and during this process the string register name gets
truncated (just try to process your input file with -ww to see what I
mean).

If a numeric field doesn't contain a digit, tbl centers it.
Otherwise, it uses the first digit to align, which fails of course.
Try, for example, to change the number `79' to `79.123' and `81' to
`81.12345' and you see that those fields aren't handled properly too,
this is, they are centered and not aligned at the decimal point.

> While I still think it's a bug, [...]

Why do you think so?  At tbl stage it's impossible to expand a string
register!


    Werner