How to coerce AWK to evaluate string as math expression?

Question

Is there a way to evaluate a string as a math expression in awk?

balter@spectre3:~$ echo \"sin(0.3) 0.3\" | awk \'{print $1,sin($2)}\'
sin(0.3) 0.29552
         


        

Answer 1

Here's a simple one liner!

math(){ awk "BEGIN{printf $1}"; }

Examples of use:

math 1+1  

Yields "2"

math 'sqrt(25)'

Yeilds "5"

x=100; y=5; math "sqrt($x) + $y"

Yeilds "15"