Re: bc

[Gregory Seidman <gss+debian@cs.brown.edu>]

Oleg sez:
} OK I would like to know how this monstrosity made it into Debian Stable:
} 
} $ whatis bc
} bc (1)               - An arbitrary precision calculator language
} $ bc
} bc 1.06
} Copyright 1991-1994, 1997, 1998, 2000 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
} This is free software with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.
} For details type `warranty'.
} 6.2/0.3
} 20
} 
} I have looked into the man page, and nothing there indicates this kind of 
} nonsense.  I hereby propose renaming the package into "a calculator with a 
} very arbitrary precision"

RTFM and quit your whining. The man page refers to the scale variable.
By default, scale is 0 and only integers are returned:

$ bc
scale
0
6.2/0.3
20
scale=4
scale
4
6.2/0.3
20.6666

} Oleg
--Greg