echo 3+3
How can I evaluate such expressions in Bash, in this case to 6?
echo 3+3
How can I evaluate such expressions in Bash, in this case to 6?
in shells such as zsh/ksh, you can use floats for maths. If you need more maths power, use tools like bc/awk/dc
eg
var=$(echo "scale=2;3.4+43.1" | bc)
var=$(awk 'BEGIN{print 3.4*43.1}')
looking at what you are trying to do
awk '{printf "%.2f\n",$0/59.5}' ball_dropping_times >bull_velocities
echo $(( 3+3 ))
expr
is the standard way, but it only handles integers.
bash has a couple of extensions, which only handle integers as well:
$((3+3)) returns 6
((3+3)) used in conditionals, returns 0 for true (non-zero) and 1 for false
let 3+3 same as (( ))
let
and (( ))
can be used to assign values, e.g.
let a=3+3
((a=3+3))
for floating point you can use bc
echo 3+3 | bc
Use can make use of the expr command as:
expr 3 + 3
To store the result into a variable you can do:
sum=$(expr 3 + 3)
or
sum=`expr 3 + 3`
Lots of ways - most portable is to use the expr command:
expr 3 + 3
I believe the ((3+3)) method is the most rapid as it's interpreted by the shell rather than an external binary. time a large loop using all suggested methods for the most efficient.
Solved thanks to Dennis, an example of BC-use:
$ cat calc_velo.sh
#!/bin/bash
for i in `cat ball_dropping_times`
do
echo "scale=20; $i / 59.5" | bc
done > ball_velocities
My understanding of math processing involves floating point processing.
Using bashj (https://sourceforge.net/projects/bashj/) you can call a java method (with floating point processing, cos(), sin(), log(), exp()...) using simply
bashj +eval "3+3"
bashj +eval "3.5*5.5"
or in a bashj script, java calls of this kind:
#!/usr/bin/bashj
EXPR="3.0*6.0"
echo $EXPR "=" u.doubleEval($EXPR)
FUNCTIONX="3*x*x+cos(x)+1"
X=3.0
FX=u.doubleEval($FUNCTIONX,$X)
echo "x="$X " => f(x)=" $FUNCTIONX "=" $FX
Note the interesting speed : ~ 10 msec per call (the answer is provided by a JVM server).
Note also that u.doubleEval(1/2) will provide 0.5 (floating point) instead of 0 (integer)