irritating: bc float expression leads to integer result

Question

I have been happily using bc for a few weeks. Now I need to do some simple calculations like 1.0+27.0/37.0*5.0, which bc in interactive mode calculates as integer result. I tried this on two different linux boxes. Same result: 1 instead of 4.67...

Can you suggest an explanation?

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 14 '15 at 15:40

0

Are you really using bc for several weeks? By default bc computes on integer numbers. You may change it either by typing first:

scale=8

(or whatever number of digits you need).

Or by launching bc with: bc -l which is often the most convenient way since it also loads some scientific functions.

answered Nov 14 '15 at 15:40

Thomas Baruchel

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Baruchel, thanks a lot for the quick answer. You're perfectly right. I just didn't see that in the man pages. – Sven Schirmer Nov 14 '15 at 17:45

irritating: bc float expression leads to integer result

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