Node:OFMT, Next:Printf, Previous:Output Separators, Up:Printing
printWhen the print statement is used to print numeric values,
awk internally converts the number to a string of characters
and prints that string. awk uses the sprintf function
to do this conversion
(see String Manipulation Functions).
For now, it suffices to say that the sprintf
function accepts a format specification that tells it how to format
numbers (or strings), and that there are a number of different ways in which
numbers can be formatted. The different format specifications are discussed
more fully in
Format-Control Letters.
The built-in variable OFMT contains the default format specification
that print uses with sprintf when it wants to convert a
number to a string for printing.
The default value of OFMT is "%.6g".
The way print prints numbers can be changed
by supplying different format specifications
as the value of OFMT, as shown in the following example:
$ awk 'BEGIN {
> OFMT = "%.0f" # print numbers as integers (rounds)
> print 17.23, 17.54 }'
-| 17 18
According to the POSIX standard, awk's behavior is undefined
if OFMT contains anything but a floating-point conversion specification.
(d.c.)