Awk problem - convert a char string to integer

[Ronelle van Niekerk]

I'm trying to total up the size of a backup session using the omnirpt command.
Unfortunately the Size field is not constant if using " " as a delimiter because the Description field sometimes has spaces in it.

So I've grabbed the size like so:
used_kb = substr($0,123,10)
But that inserts spaces in front of the number.

So I tried getting rid of them with:
gsub(" ","",used_kb)
and it prints fine but when I total all the lines with:
total_kb = total_kb + used_kb
I get funny output:
TOTAL KB = 1.25552e+07

Is there a way to convert a line that looks something like this:
123
to an integer?

-Ronelle

[Hein van den Heuvel · Accepted solution]

You don't suppose that the output is simply correct perhaps? 1e07 kb would be 10,000,000 kb = 10,000 mb = 10 gb. Not unreasonable perhaps?

If the output is correct, you only have an output formatting problem. Use PRINTF to force your own method over the default.
fwiw... I sometimes use 0 + string to force an number conversion... 'just to be sure'.

# awk 'BEGIN{u=substr(" 123 ",2,6); t=u+0;print u "|" t "|"}'
123 |123|
# awk 'BEGIN{t=12345678;print t; printf ("%9d\n",t)}'
1.23457e+07
12345678

met vriendelijke groetjes,
Hein.

[Hein van den Heuvel]

arghh 1:
The forum stripped my carefully places spaces, I chould have also printed a leading seperation bar "|", but I think it also converted multiple spaces before and after the " 123 " into a single space.

arghh 2: (minor), I just check Ronelle's profile and while the name suggests Holland, to registered country is New Zealand. Oh well, so much for the localized sign off. Then again...

Cheers,
Hein.

[Ronelle van Niekerk]

Thanks for the info Hein.

I'm actually from South Africa and speak afrikaans so your friendly greeting didn't go un-noticed!