diff --git a/scripts/rnnlm/get_num_splits.sh b/scripts/rnnlm/get_num_splits.sh
index 93d1f7f169c..974fd8bf204 100755
--- a/scripts/rnnlm/get_num_splits.sh
+++ b/scripts/rnnlm/get_num_splits.sh
@@ -65,7 +65,7 @@ tot_with_multiplicities=0
 
 for f in $text/*.counts; do
   if [ "$f" != "$text/dev.counts" ]; then
-    this_tot=$(cat $f | awk '{tot += $2} END{print tot}')
+    this_tot=$(cat $f | awk '{tot += $2} END{printf("%d", tot)}')
     if ! [ $this_tot -gt 0 ]; then
       echo "$0: there were no counts in counts file $f" 1>&2
       exit 1