Re: Floating point computations

[Greg Wooledge]

On Tue, Apr 20, 2021 at 10:07:40PM +0200, steve-humphreys@gmx.com wrote:
> Want to use a function for doing mathematical computations as
> follows.
> 
> mtk ()
>   {
>     s=`echo "$@" | bc -l`
>     echo "$s"
>   }
> 
> $(mtk "15.6+299.33*2.3/7.4")
> $(mtk "scale=5; 15.6+299.33*2.3/7.4")

1) Do not call the function inside a command substitution.  Instead of
   $(myfunc)
   just call
   myfunc

2) You don't need to capture the output in a variable and then write the
   contents of the variable,  Just let bc write directly to stdout.  Step
   out of its way.  Let it do what it does.

mtk() {
  echo "$*" | bc -l
}
mtk "15.6+299.33*2.3/7.4"