Show HN: Shellmath: Floating-point arithmetic directly in bash

  • In the spirit of "back to the basics" I'm proud to present shellmath, a decimal calculator written entirely in bash.

    Shellmath does not call out to any external programs -- calculators, text manipulators, or anything else -- and achieves execution speeds competitive with GNU awk and bc.

    Not only can you do floating-point math directly in the shell, but you now have a ready-made family of routines for doing so!

    For skeptics ;-) I've included a demo that calculates 'e'. I've also posted a few words about the methodology, runtime efficiency, and a few bells and whistles on the README and in the project wiki.

    I eagerly await your feedback!

    Be good, and have a great day!