OT: bc

[Bob Stockler]

Brian K. White wrote (on Fri, Jan 20, 2006 at 03:38:38PM -0500):

| From: "Bob Stockler" <bob at trebor.iglou.com>
| 
| >John Esak wrote (on Fri, Jan 20, 2006 at 08:07:31AM -0500):
| >
| >| Does anyone know how to set "bc" to calculate the same way filePro does.
| >| With respoect to rounding that is.
| >|
| >| filePro will give 15.36 as the value for:
| >|
| >|    aa(10,.2)="102.39" * ".15"
| >|
| >| and no matter what I do, bc gives 15.35 to the same mulitplication. I've 
| >set
| >| precision equal to 2, 4, 9, doesn't matter. If the precision goes up, it
| >| just goes up without rounding. If it goes lower down to 2, it truncates. 
| >Any
| >| way to have it not truncate but round?
| >|
| >| I like to check figures in filePro with bc and it's impossible. I've 
| >scanned
| >| the man page, of course, but didn't see anything about rounding.
| >
| >Would you settle for using AWK?  If so, create this little
| >script and make it executable:
| >
| > #!/bin/awk -f
| > { x = $1 * $2 ; printf("%6.2f\n", x) }
| >
| >Then try:  echo "102.39 .15" | scriptname
| >
| >Edit the "6" in the printf argument to be whatever number
| >of digits you need to the left of the decimal point.
| 
| printf is available outside of awk right at the shell.
| not just in ksh as a builtin either, it's a stand alone binary.

I don't find printf as a ksh builtin on SCO OSR6, so why
call two binaries (bc and printf) to do what one will do?

Bob

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