On 13 May 2010, at 16:16, roger peppe wrote:
On 13 May 2010 15:23, erik quanstrom <quans...@labs.coraid.com> wrote:
i typically do programming calculations and floating point
just isn't the right way to do that.
it's ok if you stick to 32 bit and don't do divisions.
personally for off-the-cuff command-line calculations
i've been using my own "fc" for years and
years. nothing else quite hits the spot, but
i'm biased.
my reasons: hoc doesn't do bit level ops, has too much syntax that
needs
quoting, and if you're quoting, it's awkward (in rc) to insert
environment variables inside the quotes. dc
doesn't take command line arguments,
doesn't do floating point and its output isn't suitable
for as input.
what do you mean by "its output isn't suitable for use as input"? i'm
just curious, have never used it that way. hum... having asked that
question i tried some operations producing very lare numbers and they
started to be printed with backslash-newlines in them. not nice, but
such a form is suitable for input back to dc.
there's a man page for the inferno version of fc here,
in case anyone's interested:
http://www.vitanuova.com/inferno/man/1/fc.html
fc does look good for strictly command line use (scripts, perhaps?) i
usually want to fire up a calculator in a window of its own & refer to
it as needed.
--
Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it. -- Alan Perlis
