Attempted to use awk sqrt but only returns 0

Question

I am attempting to use the sqrt function from awk command in my script, but all it returns is 0. Is there anything wrong with my script below?

echo "enter number"
read root
awk 'BEGIN{ print sqrt($root) }'

This is my first time using the awk command, are there any mistakes that I am not understanding here?

Answer 1

Maybe you can try this.

echo "enter number"
read root
echo "$root" | awk '{print sqrt($0)}'

You have to give a data input to awk. So, you can pipe 'echo'. The BEGIN statement is to do things, like print a header...etc before awk starts reading the input.