calc

Description

    Small, simple command line based calculator with history (provided 
    by bash), complex expression evaluation (provided by perl)
    and optional bin/oct/dec/hex formatting (provided by perl).

Usage

    calc [ bin | oct | dec | hex ] EXPRESSION

Notes

  1 Precision is higher if no (bin/oct/dec/hex) formatting is used. 
    Also, formatting implies non-fractional output.

  2 The 'x' character is an alternative for '*' (asterisk) 
    to do a multiplication. The advantage over using '*' is that 
    no escaping is required in a shell like 'bash'
    - Note that escaping parentheses '(' and ')' will be still 
      required.

  3 The Perl interpreter is used to do actual calculation, 
    available operators are described in 'man perlop'. 

Examples

    Normal calculation: quoting is used to avoid interpretation 
    of parentheses by the shell: 
      $ calc '(2.4 + 1) x 3'
          10.2 = (2.4 + 1) * 3

    Add decimal 3 and hexadecimal 0x10 and octal 010 and binary 0b10, 
    and output result in binary format:
      $ calc bin 3 + 0x10 + 010 + 0b10
          0b11101 = 3 + 0x10 + 010 + 0b10
    All in decimals this is: 
      $ calc dec 3 + 16 + 8 + 2
          29 = 3 + 16 + 8 + 2

    Note the difference between with or without formatting argument:
      $ calc dec 12345678 x 12.12
          149629617 = 12345678 * 12.12
      $ calc  12345678 x 12.12
          149629617.36 = 12345678 * 12.12

    Simple conversions:
      $ calc hex 65535
          0xffff = 65535
      $ calc dec 0xffff
          65535 = 0xffff

Prerequisites

    - bash (version 3.1.16(1) used for testing, but any should work)
    - perl (version v5.8.8 used for testing, but any >=5 should work)

See Also

    man perlop

Related

    - expr, man expr (may help out if 'perl' is not available) 
    - GUI-based calculators: xcalc, kcalc (just to name a few)
    - other command line based calculators 
    - Gentoo-Linux category sci-calculators

Version

    0.04.0001 (2007-03-30)