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Numeric and String Constants

A numeric constant stands for a number. This number can be an integer, a decimal fraction, or a number in scientific (exponential) notation.¹ Here are some examples of numeric constants that all have the same value:

105
1.05e+2
1050e-1

A string constant consists of a sequence of characters enclosed in double-quotation marks. For example:

"parrot"

represents the string whose contents are parrot. Strings in gawk can be of any length, and they can contain any of the possible eight-bit ASCII characters including ASCII NUL (character code zero). Other awk implementations may have difficulty with some character codes.

Footnotes

1. The internal representation of all numbers, including integers, uses double-precision floating-point numbers. On most modern systems, these are in IEEE 754 standard format.