A Simple Function to Perform Integer/Float Arithmetic Calculation via AWK

ACMer

5 years ago

The inbuilt BASH does not support floating point arithmetic calculations but we can easily declare a function to do so via AWK.

#!/bin/bash
# calc.sh

function calc() {
    awk "BEGIN { print $*; }"    
}

calc $*

You can also export this function in your ~/.bashrc file. Example usage over the command line:

$ ./calc.sh 355/113
3.14159
$ ./calc.sh "3/2**2"
0.75
$ ./calc.sh "(3/2)**2"
2.25

We pass the parameter to BASH function which invokes the AWK to evaluate the arithmetic result from the expression using the printf function.