The GNU Awk User's Guide - Typing and Comparison Go to the first , previous , next , last section, table of contents . The Guide is definitive.
Reality is frequently inaccurate.
Unlike other programming languages, awk variables do not have a fixed type. Instead, they can be either a number or a string, depending upon the value that is assigned to them. This concept is used for determining the type of a variable. The type of the variable is important, since the types of two variables determine how they are compared. In gawk , variable typing follows these rules.