Re: Command line variable assignment problems with localized floats

[Jürgen Kahrs]

Heike C. Zimmerer wrote:

>  $ echo | LC_NUMERIC=de_DE.utf8 awk "$awktest" a=1.23 b=4,56
>  a: "1.23"->1,000000, b: "4,56"->4,000000

Confirmed, I can reproduce all your results.
 
> Neither "." (correct) nor the now current deciaml point (",") are
> recognized.  (Btw, changing the last printf argument from `b´ into 
> `b ""´ (concatenation with the empty string) yields the correct result,
> which seems to indicate to me that the error happens very early during the
> interpretation of the command line argument).

Good guess. The file main.c of GNU Awk 3.1.5 contains
the following comment on the issue:

        /*
         * Force the issue here.  According to POSIX 2001, decimal
         * point is used for parsing source code and for command-line
         * assignments and the locale value for processing input,
         * number to string conversion, and printing output.
         */
        setlocale(LC_NUMERIC, "C");

This should explain your results. I have not checked
against the actual text of the POSIX documentation
in detail. I would leave it to Arnold Robbins or
Paul Eggert to decide on this one.