1. Name

bc[man page] - An arbitrary precision calculator language

2. Synopsis

bc [ -hlwsqv ] [long-options] [  file ... ] 

3. Examples

bc is a very handy calculator. No need for GUI when using bc. Let's see if it knows how to count. We will start with addition:

$ echo "34.7 + 345.655" | bc 

How about subtraction:

$ echo "34.7 - 345.655" | bc 

Multiplication:

$ echo "34.7 * 345.655" | bc 

For division we need to specify a floating point as a "scale=x", so for example to calculate with a floating point precision of 10, we should enter:

$ echo "scale=10; 10 / 3" | bc 

The default precision is 0:

echo "10 / 3" | bc 

Converting from decimal to hexadecimal number is even easier. All we need to specify is an output base ( obase ) and an input base ( ibase ). Let's convert a decimal 1000 number to a hexadecimal number:

$ echo "obase=16; ibase=10; 1000;" | bc