Printing Output
***************
One of the most common programming actions is to "print" or output,
some or all of the input. Use the `print' statement for simple output,
and the `printf' statement for fancier formatting. The `print'
statement is not limited when computing _which_ values to print.
However, with two exceptions, you cannot specify _how_ to print
them--how many columns, whether to use exponential notation or not, and
so on. (For the exceptions, Note:Output Separators, and Note:Controlling Numeric Output with `print'.) For that, you need the
`printf' statement (Note:Using `printf' Statements for Fancier
Printing.).
Besides basic and formatted printing, this major node also covers
I/O redirections to files and pipes, introduces the special file names
that `gawk' processes internally, and discusses the `close' built-in
function.