Shell Programming and Scripting

hi all, i have the following problem using awk in a script

i want to read the values from a column with real numbers and calculate the mean.the problem is that when i use a statement such as this

num = $4

i cant find a way to convert the variable from string to floating point to perform any operations.i tried the following

sum = num + 0.0

but sum is equal to 0 after this statement, num is not treated as floating point number but as string

any help would be appreciated

edit : i am using awk 3.1.4 on Suse 9.2

what "operation" are you trying to perform?
for example:
echo '1.2' | nawk '{num=$1; print num, num+3.5}'

i just want to do simple mathematical operations.to be more clear here is a test awk script i used

BEGIN{}

{

num = $1
sum += num

}

END {
print sum
}

where column 1 contains the floating point numbers
print sum produces 0...

i tried to add 0.0 to num to force to be treated as number and not as string but that didnt work either

produces a fine floating point number for me - Solaris's nawk:

Code:

nawk '{sum +=$1} END{print sum}' <<!
1.2
1.3
1.4
!

neither awk or gawk works for me...
anyway thanks for replying

works under gawk for me....
there must be something strange with your 'data source'

yes you were right.the problem was with the dots (.), for some reason awk recognizes only the comma as a separator of the integral from the fractal part of the number.thanks for the help man