Float operation with bc?

Question

It looks like bc doesn't support float operations, when I do echo 1/8 | bc it get me a zero.

I checked bc (1), but it doesn't even mention float, so I wonder if it's supported?

Answer 1

bc doesn't do floating point but it does do fixed precision decimal numbers. The -l flag Hauke mentions loads a math library for eg. trig functions but it also means

[...] the default scale is 20

scale is one of a number of "special variables" mentioned in the man page. You can set it:

scale=4

Anytime you want (whether -l was used or not). It refers to the number of significant digits used in a decimal. In other words, subsequent solutions will be rounded to that number of digits after the decimal scale (== fixed precision).

The default scale sans -l is 0, meaning rounded to whole numbers.

Answer 2

man page says:

If bc is invoked with the -l option, a math library is preloaded [...]

The comprehensibility of that could be improved, indeed...