Absolute value in awk doesn't work?

Question

I want to select line of a file where the absolute value of column 9 is less than 500. Column is sometimes positive, sometimes negative.

awk -F\'\\t\' \'{ if         


        

Answer 1

For quick one-liners, I use this approach:

awk -F'\t' 'sqrt($9*$9) < 500' > output.bam

It's quick to type, but for large jobs, I'd imagine that sqrt() would impose a performance hit.