Does bc supports hex calculations?

Question

I'm trying to do a hex calculation directly with bc, I already specified the scale.

echo 'scale=16;c06b1000-c06a5e78' | bc

But it still got me zero. What could be wrong?

Answer 1

echo 'ibase=16;C06D1000-C06A5E78' | bc
176520

if you need answer in hex too (but note that only upper case hex digits are supported as lower case ones would conflict with function and variable names, which is why you got 0 in your example (var1 - var2)):

echo 'obase=16;ibase=16;C06D1000-C06A5E78' | bc
2B188

ps. FYI scale isn't designed for conversion base. from man bc:

scale defines how some operations use digits after the decimal point.
The default value of scale is 0.

Answer 2

While not technically an answer to your question, you might want to consider moo(1) instead of bc(1).