On Thu, Oct 31, 2002 at 08:37:00AM -0500, Oleg wrote:
> OK I would like to know how this monstrosity made it into Debian Stable:
>
> $ whatis bc
> bc (1) - An arbitrary precision calculator language
> $ bc
> bc 1.06
> Copyright 1991-1994, 1997, 1998, 2000 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
> This is free software with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.
> For details type `warranty'.
> 6.2/0.3
> 20
>
> I have looked into the man page, and nothing there indicates this kind of
> nonsense. I hereby propose renaming the package into "a calculator with a
> very arbitrary precision"
I found this in the man page:
<quote>
There are two attributes of num- bers, the length and the scale. The
length is the total number of sig- nificant decimal digits in a number
and the scale is the total number of decimal digits after the decimal
point.
</quote>
and
<quote>
The default value of scale is 0.
</quote>
Thus:
bc 1.06
Copyright 1991-1994, 1997, 1998, 2000 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.
For details type `warranty'.
scale=5
6.2/0.3
20.66666
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Rick Pasotto [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.niof.net
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