Hi,
Jonathan Dowland:
> On Fri, Sep 12, 2014 at 03:49:11PM +0200, Thorsten Glaser wrote:
> > bc is the standard Unix calculator, normally a dc frontend,
> > and used in *a lot* of scripts.
>
> Is there any way of verifying or even reasonably estimating how common it is
> used? *Within* debian, sadly it's hard to ascertain via codesearch as 'bc' is
> too short, but /bc => http://codesearch.debian.net/search?q=%2Fbc
>
> I must admit I've never seen it used in 3rd party scripts in my entire career
> as a sysadmin.
>
I've seen lots of it, in old scripts which need(ed) to work[*] without the
benefit of POSIX-shell-isms, let alone bash-.
[*] For some value of "work". They tend to plod along without regard for
error conditions.
bash's "set -o pipefail" should have been the default from the
beginning. But I digress.
> > And yes, bc is also the primary interactive calculator,
> > for things beyond what $((…)) can do.
>
> We've got python in priority:standard.
>
And perl, which has the advantage of an '-e' switch.
Or [m]awk, which is even Required (is there still a reason for that?).
--
-- Matthias Urlichs
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