How to compare two floating point numbers in Bash?

Question

I am trying hard to compare two floating point numbers within a bash script. I have to variables, e.g.

let num1=3.17648e-22
let num2=1.5

Now, I just want do a simple comparison of these two numbers:

st=`echo "$num1 < $num2" | bc`
if [ $st -eq 1]; then
  echo -e "$num1 < $num2"
else
  echo -e "$num1 >= $num2"
fi

Unfortunately, I have some problems with the right treatment of the num1 which can be of the "e-format". :(

Any help, hints are welcome!

Answer 1

This script may help where I'm checking if installed grails version is greater than minimum required. Hope it helps.

#!/bin/bash                                                                                         

min=1.4                                                                                             
current=`echo $(grails --version | head -n 2 | awk '{print $NF}' | cut -c 1-3)`                         

if [ 1 -eq `echo "${current} < ${min}" | bc` ]                                                          
then                                                                                                
    echo "yo, you have older version of grails."                                                   
else                                                                                                                                                                                                                       
    echo "Hurray, you have the latest version" 
fi

Answer 2

It's better to use awk for non integer mathematics. You can use this bash utility function:

numCompare() {
   awk -v n1="$1" -v n2="$2" 'BEGIN {printf "%s " (n1<n2?"<":">=") " %s\n", n1, n2}'
}

And call it as:

numCompare 5.65 3.14e-22
5.65 >= 3.14e-22

numCompare 5.65e-23 3.14e-22
5.65e-23 < 3.14e-22

numCompare 3.145678 3.145679
3.145678 < 3.145679

Answer 3

How about this? =D

VAL_TO_CHECK="1.00001"
if [ $(awk '{printf($1 >= $2) ? 1 : 0}' <<<" $VAL_TO_CHECK 1 ") -eq 1 ] ; then
    echo "$VAL_TO_CHECK >= 1"
else
    echo "$VAL_TO_CHECK < 1"
fi