Mike Huber wrote: > Hi, > I'm just trying to do some quick calculations using bc, but the > version installed through portage truncates on > multiplication/division. It didn't used to do this 2 years ago when I > was taking number theory, and there are no USE flags available for > sys-devel/bc to change this. From the manpage: > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > > The most basic element in bc is the number. Numbers are arbitrary > precision numbers. This precision is both in > the integer part and the fractional part. All numbers are > represented internally in decimal and all computation is done in > decimal. ( This version truncates results from divide and multiply > operations.) There are two attributes of numbers, the length and the > scale. The length is the total number of significant decimal digits > in a number and the scale is the total number of decimal digits after > the decimal point. For example: > .000001 has a length of 6 and scale of 6. > 1935.000 has a length of 7 and a scale of 3. > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > > Anyone have any ideas? > > --Mike
Hi, Try this. $ echo '1/5' | bc 0 $ echo '1/5' | bc -l .20000000000000000000 I don't think bc has changed in a long time. Maybe you forgot the -l option. You can also control the scale explicitly like this. echo 'scale=3;1/5' | bc -l .200 Hope this helps. John Green -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
