How do you calculate?

[Oleg Goldshmidt]

"Nadav Har'El" <nyh at math.technion.ac.il> writes:

> Or do you use bc? Does anyone actually use bc, which returns "0" as a result
> for the calculation "2/3"? :-) Of course, you can use "scale=10" (or the -l
> option to bc) to fix that, but how many first-time users would know that?
> What posessed the person who decided to make scale=0 the default?
> :-)

I don't know, but

$ type calc
calc is a function
calc () 
{ 
    echo "$@" | bc -l
}
$ calc 2/3
.66666666666666666666

has been a trusted friend for years (among other things - e.g., I use
emacs scratch buffer a lot to do calculations in lisp).

> So I was wondering - how come there isn't more pressure on the Linux
> distributions to include a decent and convenient calculator language?
> Or do people consider what is available decent enough already?

My guess is that since you can, e.g., click on the kickoff launcher
(if you are a KDE user as myself), type "calc" in the search field,
and get prompted for half a dozen really good graphical calculator
programs the pressure has subsided a bit...

-- 
Oleg Goldshmidt | pub at goldshmidt.org