AWK bug; conditional test incorrect

[InsaneBeast]

Binary package hint: original-awk

*When evaluating very small numbers, awk will return the wrong value for a conditional test. A reproducible example of this bug follows. In this example the number 1.406605e-319 is compared to the number 1, 1e-4, and 1e-5. In all cases 1.406605e-319 is the smaller value, yet the result returned by the conditional test changes:

$ echo 1.406605e-319 |awk '($1<1){print "lower"} ($1>1){print "higher"}'
higher
$ echo 1.406605e-319 |awk '($1<1e-4){print "lower"} ($1>1e-4){print "higher"}'
higher
$ echo 1.406605e-319 |awk '($1<1e-5){print "lower"} ($1>1e-5){print "higher"}'
lower

*In this second example, 1e-319 is compared to the number 1, 1e-5, and 1e-50. In the previous example, comparing 1.406605e-319 with 1e-5 returned the correct result from the conditional statement. However, in this example comparing 1e-319 with 1e-5 no longer returns the correct value.

$ echo 1e-319 |awk '($1<1){print "lower"} ($1>1){print "higher"}'
higher
$ echo 1e-319 |awk '($1<1e-5){print "lower"} ($1>1e-5){print "higher"}'
higher
$ echo 1e-319 |awk '($1<1e-50){print "lower"} ($1>1e-50){print "higher"}'
lower

This bug is also reproducible in gawk. Interestingly, mawk seems to handle all comparisons correctly.