Re: shell wrappers for trig and other mathematical functions
On 10/1/19 8:32 PM, Dan Hitt wrote:
I'm half-way looking for some shell wrappers for common trig functions like
sin, cos, exp, log, and others.
I'm aware of bc, but it seems cumbersome.
I would like to just type 'sin 1' and get the sine (of 1 radian),
Perl one-liners are an option:
2019-10-01 19:25:59 dpchrist@tinkywinky ~
$ perl -e 'print sin 1'
0.841470984807897
or type 'log 2'
2019-10-01 20:48:52 dpchrist@tinkywinky ~
$ perl -e 'print log 2'
0.693147180559945
and get the natural or maybe common log of 2. (Probably any such
program should do something intelligent when faced with multiple or zero
arguments, such as computing the sine or log of each, so that they could be
chained together. And maybe such a program would pay attention to
environment variables or optional command line arguments to tune its
behavior.)
These kinds of programs would be super-easy to write in just about any
language (i guess perhaps even just as bash functions which shell out to bc
for at least some of the simpler functions) but before i actually do
something like that, i wonder if somebody has already done it, whether
there exist any standards or good ideas, etc. (Because if somebody has a
good, thoughtful exp program, for example, then it could be cookie-cutter
copied to a bunch of other functions.)
There is a precedent of sorts in Paul Rubin's factor program, which is just
oh-so-handy when you're wondering how an integer factors, but don't want to
start up some heavy-weight system just to find out.
2019-10-01 20:49:17 dpchrist@tinkywinky ~
$ apt-cache search libmath-prime-util-perl
libmath-prime-util-perl - utilities related to prime numbers, including
fast sieves and factoring
Thanks in advance for any pointers or advice! :)
dan
David
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