An Awk Primer/Numbers and Strings 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 are expressed in double quotes. For example: "All work
and no play makes Jack a homicidal maniac!" "do re mi fa so la
ti do" Awk also supports null strings, which are represented by
empty quotes: There are various "special" characters that can be
embedded into strings: \nNewline (line feed) \tHorizontal tab
(aligns to next column of 8 spaces) \fForm 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, \m), it is simply
treated as a normal character.