linuxunixawklexicographicasort

awk / gawk asorti() problem

I've got following problem with gawk's asorti function:

gawk 'BEGIN{ \

  a[1]=6; \

  a[2]=7; \

  a[3]=8; \

  a[21]=9; \

  a[123]=10; \

  t=asorti(a, o); \

  for (i=1; i<=t; i++) { \

    print i,o[i]; \

  } \

}'

The result is:

1 1

2 123

3 2

4 21

5 3

So it's pretty clear awk, sorted indices in lexicographical order, but awk's doc says (asort(s[, d])):

"The contents of s are sorted using gawk’s normal rules for comparing values..."

However, when I copy indices itself into temp array, and sort that new array using asort(),

it seems ok (using something like):

j=1; for(e in a) { temp[j++] = e; }

Am I DOIN-IT-WRONG, or is it problem with gawk's asorti() ?

Solution

  • According to the gawk manual: "An important aspect about arrays to remember is that array subscripts are always strings."