On Tue, Sep 09, 2025 at 00:10:55 -0600, Stan Marsh wrote: > I suppose that what this thread is really about is how some desperate > shell coders resorted to AWK to do floating point comparisons before > there was the fltexpr loadable command.
Loadable builtins are not readily available on all platforms. I *never* recommend them as first tier solutions to any bash questions. They may come up as alternative solutions if the discussion drags on long enough. Since bash can't compare floating point numbers natively, it's quite sensible to use awk to do it. This is not even difficult. What we need to know is what the OP tried to do, and unfortunately that information does not seem to be available. For anyone who wants pointers on comparing floating point numbers in bash scripts, I even have a FAQ page for it: <https://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashFAQ/022>. Sadly, the AI scrapers are back to full strength this morning, so it might be difficult to load the page. If we're discussing crimes against humanity, THOSE are on my list. There's a static mirror at <http://pgas.freeshell.org/mirror/wooledge/BashFAQ(2f)022.html>. > Bash will exit on non-success exit code of the first awk statement, > so the if statement will be incorrectly evaluated. If bash is actually *exiting*, that implies that set -e may be in effect, which opens up a whole new dimension of excitement. This entire bug report might boil down to "I used set -e and didn't understand the consequences".
