Very Computer

Hi awk users,

I am quite new to awk programming. I have a problem. I want to seperate between number
character and alphabet character from a data file that I obtained as an output from
a program. The sample output is shown below;
____________________________________________________________________________________
nrows, ncols, cell size: 14 29 152.439024
rowout, colout, sout:-29 -40 0.000800
simulating spatially distributed roughness
simulating spatially distributed raingage rainfall data
infiltration is computed
computational time step (sec), total simulation time (sec), and rainfall duration (sec):  60.00 5000 720

  Time (min)   Discharge (cms)
    1.00       3.21 58.7715
    2.00       3.21 58.7715
    3.00       3.21 58.7715
    4.00       3.21 58.7715
    5.00       3.21 58.7715
    6.00       3.21 58.7715
    7.00       3.21 58.7715
    8.00       3.21 58.7715
    9.00       3.21 58.7715
   10.00       3.21 58.7715
   11.00       3.21 58.7715
   12.00       3.21 58.7715
   13.00       3.21 58.7715
   14.00       3.21 58.7715
   15.00       3.21 58.7715
   16.00       3.21 58.7715
   17.00       3.21 58.7715
   18.00       3.21 58.7715
   19.00       3.21 58.7715
   20.00       3.21 58.7715
   21.00       3.21 58.7715
_____________________________________________________________________________________
I would like to print only the number character and I wrote a short awk programme as
shown below;
************************************************************************************
BEGIN{
decimal = "[0-9]+[.]?[0-9]*"
fraction = "[.] [0-9]+"
number = "^" decimal fraction
$0 ~ number

Quote:}

 {print}
*************************************************************************************
However, I got the following error message, and I don't know what it is;
awk: syntax error near line 5
awk: illegal statement near line 5

Can anyone help point out what I am missing here.
Sorry, to post this problem to the netters since some of you might find it very easy.

Thanks for any help.

Cheers,
Kamarul