[bug-gawk] Unstated differences between gawk and POSIX

[Ed Morton]

When reading the POSIX standard for gawk recently 
(https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.lang.awk/qYhgpz08pN8/ihidWMLmCQAJ) I 
noticed a couple of cases wrt comparisons where gawk behaves differently from 
what [parts of] the POSIX spec say. I posted a question about it at 
comp.lang.awk 
(https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.lang.awk/qYhgpz08pN8/9wbMr9XKCQAJ) to see 
if I might be just misunderstanding the spec but that doesn't seem to be the 
case. The issues are:

1) POSIX states that a numeric-string vs numeric-string comparison should be a 
string comparison but gawks does a numeric comparison.
2) POSIX states that an uninitialized field (e.g. $3 or higher when you only 
have 2 input fields) should have the same value as an uninitialized array 
element or scalar variable and that value is zero-or-null but in a comparison 
gawk treats an uninitialized field as a string with value null only.

You can see the comp.lang.awk question for details and references if you're 
interested. I think it's POSIX that should change to match gawks behavior (which 
is also the behavior of at least some other awks) rather than the other way 
around but idk how to make that happen (yet) or if/when it will happen, nor do I 
know if gawk should have something documented about the differences meantime so 
I at least wanted to give you a heads up about the issues and you can decide if 
anything should change on the gawk tool or documentation side.

     Ed.