How to take the absolute value using awk?

You can define functions in awk like:

awk -F'[-,]' '
  function abs(v) {return v < 0 ? -v : v}
  {print abs(360*($4-$1)+30*($5-$2)+($6-$3))}'

The common trick for this kind of situations is to use square root of the square:

awk -F'[-,]' '{print sqrt((360*($4-$1)+30*($5-$2)+($6-$3))^2)}'

Another way:

awk -F'[-,]' '{d=360*($4-$1)+30*($5-$2)+($6-$3);print (d>0)?d:-d}'

Related