How do you calculate?

[Meir Kriheli]

On Friday 21 May 2010 00:03:10 Oleg Goldshmidt wrote:
> "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...

For quick calculations KDE4's krunner (alt+F2 by default) is enough. See here 
for more info:

http://userbase.kde.org/Tutorials/Krunner#Using_as_a_calculator

Cheers
--
Meir