Shell Programming and Scripting

I was writing a awk function and had a error I was wondering about. It revolves around a Multidimensional array starting with ord

example:

Code:

                   if ( _e[$1,$4] == 5 ) {
                      lmrb[$1,$4]=$5 ; lmtb[$1,$4]=$6 ; larb[$1,$4]=$7 ;
                      latb[$1,$4]=$8
                   }

                   if ( _e[$1,$4] == 6 ) {
                      ord[$1,$4]=$6 ; otd[$1,$4]=$7
                   }

I kept getting the following error:

/usr/xpg4/bin/awk: file "[command line]": line 77: syntax error Context is:
>>>
>>> ^I^I }
>>>
>>> ^I^I if ( _e[$1,$4] == 6 ) {
>>> ^I^I ord[ <<<

The only way I could clear this error was changing:

Code:

ord[$1,$4]=$6 ; otd[$1,$4]=$7

to

Code:

Ord[$1,$4]=$6 ; otd[$1,$4]=$7

Can someone help me understand what ord means in awk?

I also verified that I do not have another var named ord in the script.

Thanks

One commercial implementation of awk supplies a built-in function, ord, which takes a character and returns the numeric value for that character in the machine's character set..

Thanks vidyadhar85.