Rounding off real (floating point) values - bash to awk

[Eliot Moss]

On 11/26/2015 8:24 AM, Lester Anderson wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I can use a script like:
>
> #!/bin/bash
> x=3.7
> # pass variable x to awk via -v (var=value)
> awk -v x=$x 'BEGIN { printf "%3.0f\n", x }'
> #
>
> which returns the value 4 as expected, but are there any other methods
> that can be used?

In bash this must be a string (bash uses only fixed width integers for numbers),
so you can put as many decimal places as you like.  awk will treat it as a string
or floating point number, depending on context.  The f output format forces conversion.
Another way is to do arithmetic;  even x+0 will do it.  IIRC, all numbers in awk are
doubles (IEEE 64-bit floats).  The documentation on awk can tell you more about
conversions, rounding, etc.

Regards -- Eliot Moss

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