Python as Calculator
As often as I need a calculator, I rarely have one within arm's reach. I do sit in front of thousands of dollars of computer equipment nearly all day, though, and if I can't do some arithmetic with it, well, what can I do?
I usually resort to
bc, but I use it so rarely that I can never
remember the correct syntax.
bash is usually a good backup with its
$((1 + 1)) syntax that I can use right from the shell prompt, but this
particular method doesn't do floating point math. I did the
find-a-suitable-calculator song and dance again today, but found a new
partner this time: Python.
Python is a natural choice: it will return floating-point values without any additional steps, it retains a command history, and it allows for storing results in a variable. If you're handy with printf style statements, you can even format output to your liking. As an example:
annika@shed:~$ python Python 2.4 (#1, Jan 1 2005, 21:33:55) [GCC 3.3.4] on linux2 Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information. >>> 7 * 19 133 >>> 3 / 21.0 0.14285714285714285 >>> print "%0.2f" % (81 / 2.1) 38.57 >>>