linuxfunctionawk

What's the meaning of the symbol "?" in awk user defined function

Dear stackOverflow community, Here is the code from cut&tag tutorial text. I can't understand the meaning of the code for awk user defined function,

awk -F'\t' 'function abs(x){return ((x < 0.0) ? -x : x)} {print abs($9)}'

Any help would be appreciated!

Solution

  • It's the conditional operator. x ? y : z is mostly equivalent to if (x) { y } else { z }

    This means the function is equivalent to:

    function abs(x){if(x < 0.0) { return -x; } else { return x; }}