An Awk Primer/Numbers and Strings

Numbers
Numbers can be expressed in Awk as either decimal integers or floating-point quantities. For example: There is no provision for specifying values in other bases, such as hex or octal; however, as will be shown later, it is possible to output them from Awk in hex or octal format.

Strings
Strings are expressed in double quotes. For example:

Awk also supports null strings, which are represented by empty quotes:.

There are various "special" characters that can be embedded into strings:
 * Newline (line feed)
 * Horizontal tab (aligns to next column of 8 spaces)
 * Backspace
 * Carriage return
 * Form feed (possibly causes a new page, if printing)

A double-quote can be embedded in a string by preceding it with a backslash, and a backslash can be embedded in a string by typing it in twice:. If a backslash is used with other characters (say, ), it is simply treated as a normal character.