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  • GAWK: Bug/mis-feature in arraymax.awk

    From gazelle@gazelle@shell.xmission.com (Kenny McCormack) to comp.lang.awk on Tue Jan 18 14:47:22 2022
    From Newsgroup: comp.lang.awk

    The GAWK distro contains an example program called arraymax.awk - that calculates the maximum of a series of input values. However, it uses the
    naive way of calculating the max - which fails if all the values are
    negative (Tested and verified by taking the sample data file and prefixing
    all the numbers with "-"; the program then generates no output).

    Perhaps something to fix. Note the correct algorithm in my other post,
    where you initialize the max value to the first input arg.
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  • From Andrew Schorr@aschorr@telemetry-investments.com to comp.lang.awk on Thu Jan 20 05:31:27 2022
    From Newsgroup: comp.lang.awk

    On Tuesday, January 18, 2022 at 9:47:23 AM UTC-5, Kenny McCormack wrote:
    The GAWK distro contains an example program called arraymax.awk - that calculates the maximum of a series of input values.

    Actually, it's just an inaptly-named sample program to demonstrate some array features,
    not a general-purpose max calculator. From the docs:

    https://www.gnu.org/software/gawk/manual/html_node/Array-Example.html

    The following program takes a list of lines, each beginning with a line
    number, and prints them out in order of line number. The line numbers
    are not in order when they are first read---instead, they
    are scrambled. This program sorts the lines by making an array using
    the line numbers as subscripts. The program then prints out the lines
    in sorted order of their numbers. It is a very simple program and gets confused upon encountering repeated numbers, gaps, or lines that don't
    begin with a number:
    ...

    So I don't see why it's a bug. It does what it says it does, but I agree that it certainly
    does not calculate maximum values in the general case.

    Regards,
    Andy

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  • From gazelle@gazelle@shell.xmission.com (Kenny McCormack) to comp.lang.awk on Thu Jan 20 15:30:09 2022
    From Newsgroup: comp.lang.awk

    In article <257744db-2aa0-4e4a-8434-7adadb81fdf1n@googlegroups.com>,
    Andrew Schorr <aschorr@telemetry-investments.com> wrote:
    On Tuesday, January 18, 2022 at 9:47:23 AM UTC-5, Kenny McCormack wrote:
    The GAWK distro contains an example program called arraymax.awk - that
    calculates the maximum of a series of input values.

    Actually, it's just an inaptly-named sample program to demonstrate some array features,
    not a general-purpose max calculator. From the docs:

    Agreed - and it is really no big deal. I wasn't even calling it a bug -
    just a thing that could be fixed. I'm sure that, in the fullness of time, someone (on the dev side) will notice it and decide to fix it.

    You're right about the name being misleading. But I also want to point out that when I said that it "calculates the maximum of a series of input values", that doee not necessarily mean that that is its primary purpose. In this
    case, that calculation is merely a step on the way to the actual purpose of
    the program (if you see what I mean...)
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  • From Kaz Kylheku@480-992-1380@kylheku.com to comp.lang.awk on Sat Jan 22 21:39:59 2022
    From Newsgroup: comp.lang.awk

    On 2022-01-20, Andrew Schorr <aschorr@telemetry-investments.com> wrote:
    So I don't see why it's a bug. It does what it says it does, but I agree that it certainly
    does not calculate maximum values in the general case.

    I.e. what is written on the box is a bug. The box says there are
    Cheerios inside, and by golly, there actually are. But the box should
    say Corn Flakes, damn it!
    --
    TXR Programming Language: http://nongnu.org/txr
    Cygnal: Cygwin Native Application Library: http://kylheku.com/cygnal
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