using bc

[cwl157]

Alright i have to use bc to do some floating point calculations. I was told in order to do floating point calculations with bc the -l option has to be used. However, i use the command

xScale=$(echo "scale=5 ; ($maxX - $minX)/80" | bc)

This is all floating point arithmetic and it seems to work fine without the -l option on bc. Anyone know if this is ok or if the -l option is needed or why there is this debate about the -l option for bc and floating point calculations?

[likwid]

I just use python for **** like that.

[drl]

Hi.

The bc calculation tool is very useful in situations like this.

What does your man page say about option -l? ... cheers, drl

[cwl157]

-l does this "Defines the math functions and initializes
scale to 20, instead of the default zero." But in my calculations i have the scale set to 5 and i think thats good enough. Does that mean that bc doesnt "work" with floating point because just using bc truncates the decimal but by using -l it would set the scale to 20 therefore it wont truncate the result? I have my scale to 5 and it truncates the result after 5 decimal places which i think is a good enough estimate.