Bash – Doing simple math on the command line using bash functions: $1 divided by $2 (using bc perhaps)

arithmeticbashrcbccommand linefunction

Sometimes I need to divide one number by another. It would be great if I could just define a bash function for this. So far, I am forced to use expressions like

echo 'scale=25;65320/670' | bc

but it would be great if I could define a .bashrc function that looked like

divide () {
  bc -d $1 / $2
}

Best Answer

I have a handy bash function called calc:

calc () {
    bc -l <<< "$@"
}

Example usage:

$ calc 65320/670
97.49253731343283582089

$ calc 65320*670
43764400

You can change this to suit yourself. For example:

divide() {
    bc -l <<< "$1/$2"
}

Note: <<< is a here string which is fed into the stdin of bc. You don't need to invoke echo.

Related Solutions

Bash – Running Executable in PATH with Same Name as Existing Function

Use the command shell builtin:

bash-4.2$ function date() { echo 'at the end of days...'; }

bash-4.2$ date
at the end of days...

bash-4.2$ command date
Mon Jan 21 16:24:33 EET 2013

bash-4.2$ help command
command: command [-pVv] command [arg ...]
    Execute a simple command or display information about commands.

    Runs COMMAND with ARGS suppressing  shell function lookup, or display
    information about the specified COMMANDs.  Can be used to invoke commands
    on disk when a function with the same name exists.

Bash – Get specific result from function

You could output all the other content directly to screen assuming you don't ever want to do anything with it other than display.

Something similar to this could be done

#!/bin/bash

function get_usr_choices() {
        #put everything you only want sending to screen in this block
        {
                echo these
                echo will
                echo go
                echo to
                echo screen
        }> /dev/tty
        #Everything after the block is sent to stdout which will be picked up by the assignment below
        echo result
}
choices=$(get_usr_choices)

echo "<choices is $choices>"

Running this returns

these
will
go
to
screen
<choices is result>

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Bash – Running Executable in PATH with Same Name as Existing Function

Bash – Get specific result from function

Related Question