BASH question

[Mikkel L. Ellertson]

Aaron Konstam wrote:
> Well I am willing to learn but I am unaware that Pentium cpu-s have any way to represent numbers
> with fractional parts other than floating point. So there is no such thing as fixed point representation of 
> non-integer numbers on these machines.
> 
> In addition I have not found any way to have dc deal with non-integers but that may be I am
> missing something.
> 
One way this is done, if you are after a fixed number of decimal
points, is to simply shift the decimal point over, do the math as an
integer, and shift the decimal point back to present the results. It
is integer math, but with fractional parts. It works well for doing
things like adding, and subtracting things like currency where you
have a fixed number of places after the decimal point. When doing
multiplication and devision, you can run into rounding errors,
depending on how it is implemented. I believe bc truncates results
from divide and multiply operations, instead of rounding them.

Mikkel
-- 

  Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons,
for thou art crunchy and taste good with Ketchup!