In the Bash shell, we can only perform integer arithmetic. If we want to perform arithmetic involving a floating point or fractional values, then we will need to use various other utilities, such as awk, bc, and similar.
Let's see an example of using the utility called bc:
$ echo "scale=2; 15 / 2" | bc 7.50
For using the bc utility, we need to configure a scale parameter. Scale is the number of significant digits to the right of the decimal point. We have told the bc utility to calculate 15 / 2, and then display the result with the scale of 2.
Another example is the following:
$ bc ((83.12 + 32.13) * 37.3) 4298.82
Many things can be done with the bc utility, such as all types of arithmetic operations including ...