computing limitation error - long and double

[deCG]

I am writing a shell script to compute really long numbers. But due to limitation, it is giving out wrong numbers.

I tried 'double' and 'long' as variable type but none of them are valid type.

This is output.

2847744950/3234344960 = 5295336 (huh??)

Does anybody have any clue???

Thanks a bunch.

Yong

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi:

The shell limits you to 32-bit arithmetic. Use something like Perl or 'bc'. For example:

# perl -le 'print +(2**52)'
4503599627370496

# echo 2^52|bc
4503599627370496

Regards!

...JRF...

[Dennis Handly]

>JRF: The shell limits you to 32-bit arithmetic.

ksh was changed in 11.23 to use 64 bit ints. Unfortunately the posix shell wasn't changed.

You can use awk to do calculations in double.
And gdb to do calculations in long double.
(gdb) p (long double)2847744950/3234344960
$2 = 0.88047038433401983194767202568275215

[deCG]

You guys are great... I will get back to you when I try at work...

Thanks

[deCG]

.... ....

[deCG]

thanks. it works now...