On Thu, Dec 10, 2015 at 7:30 AM, FRIGN <d...@frign.de> wrote: > but just a library with just enough functions to get around with > to handle tasks like dc(1) and bc(1).
The problem with that is bc can't use a normal bignum library and be POSIX compliant as all the internal math is required to be in base 10. "Internal computations shall be conducted as if in decimal, regardless of the input and output bases, to the specified number of decimal digits."[0] That's why implementations of bc tend to have their own arbitrary precision stuff built in. That being said a suckless bignum library can still be very useful, and sbase tends to stray from POSIX in a few places. This may be one such place that makes sense to ignore POSIX. For bc we need simple arithmetic, sqrt, integer exponents, sine, cosine, arctangent, natural log, exponential function, Bessel function of integer order, and a way to work with the bc concept of scale.[0] Depending on your performance desires many those can either be implemented in the library or in bc using a simpler library. One last off topic question, should sbase have a bc that calculates, or just translates to dc (which is not a POSIX tool, but probably useful to have in sbase). -emg [0] http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/bc.html#tag_20_09_13_03
