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Alternatives to popular CLI tools: bc

This article spotlights alternative tools to bc.

Man page for bc

The software featured here is free and open source. All tools provide a command-line interface (CLI) unless otherwise stated.

Alternatives to bc
cpcText calculator with support for units and conversion
evaSimple calculator REPL
bc-ghImplementation of Unix dc and POSIX bc with GNU and BSD extensions
bcalStorage expression calculator
fendArbitrary-precision unit-aware calculator
HypercalcInterpreted calculator program designed to calculate extremely large numbers
Have we missed any open source alternatives to bc? Please let us know!
3
Any other open source alternatives to bc?x

For more feature-laden calculators, we’ve compiled the best terminal-based Linux calculators.


All the CLI tools in this series.

Alternatives to CLI tools
age // awk // bc // cal // cat // cd // cksum // cloc // cmp // compress // cp // cron // curl // cut // date // dd // df // diff // dig // du // find // ftp // grep // gzip // hexdump // history // jq // kill // less // locate // ls // lsof // make // man // more // mv / ping // ps // psql // rename // rm // sed // split // ssh // strings // sudo // sysctl // talk // tar // telnet // time // top // touch // traceroute // tree // uname // uniq // vi // watch // Wget // who // whois // xargs

Best Free and Open Source SoftwareRead our complete collection of recommended free and open source software. Our curated compilation covers all categories of software.

The software collection forms part of our series of informative articles for Linux enthusiasts. There are hundreds of in-depth reviews, open source alternatives to proprietary software from large corporations like Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, IBM, Cisco, Oracle, and Autodesk.

There are also fun things to try, hardware, free programming books and tutorials, and much more.
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Andreas
Andreas
9 months ago
Have we missed any open source alternatives to bc? Please let us know!" Read more »

bcal has a bc mode for general-purpose numerical calculations.

Jez
Jez
9 months ago
Have we missed any open source alternatives to bc? Please let us know!" Read more »

fend is another arbitrary-precision calculator. It’s got good support for complex numbers, trig, and has an Emacs-style CLI shortcuts.

Bezz
Bezz
9 months ago
Have we missed any open source alternatives to bc? Please let us know!" Read more »

You could add HyperCalc