How do you calculate?

[shlomo bauer]

Hi,

Sammy is wondering (for years) how unix/linux users do simple calculations.

Many people write their own calculator language - in the tradition of
hoc.  Anyone who actually
enters in the code for hoc will discover something quite interesting.

Other people use languages like Nickle (http://nickle.org/); I
typically use haskell and in the past, I used ocaml and further in the
past, I used sml - still my favorite.

Another approach is to use a spreadsheet.  You can compute recursive
functions using !.

My favorite,  for "simple" cacluations, is to compute an approximate
answer and to do so, I don't generally need anything except a sense of
the scale of the numbers.

Shlomo