Documentation

bcal – storage expression calculator

bcal (Byte CALculator) is a REPL CLI utility for storage expression (e.g. “(2GiB * 2) / (2KiB >> 2)”) evaluation, SI/IEC conversion, byte address calculation, base conversion and LBA/CHS calculation. It’s very useful for those who deal with bits, bytes, addresses and binary prefixes frequently.

It has a bc mode for general-purpose numerical calculations. Alternatively, it can also invoke the more featured calc which works better with expressions involving multiple bases.

bcal uses SI and IEC binary prefixes and supports 64-bit Operating Systems only.

Key Features

  • REPL and single execution modes.
  • Evaluate arithmetic expressions involving storage units.
  • Perform general purpose calculations (using bc or calc).
  • Works with piped input or file redirection.
  • Convert to IEC/SI standard data storage units.
  • Interactive mode with the last valid result stored for reuse
  • Show the address in bytes.
  • Show address as LBA:OFFSET.
  • Convert CHS to LBA and vice versa.
  • Base conversion to binary, decimal and hex.
  • Custom sector size, max heads/cylinder and max sectors/track.
  • Minimal dependencies.

Website: github.com/jarun/bcal
Support:
Developer: Arun Prakash Jana
License: GNU General Public License v3.0

Man page for bcal

bcal is written in C. Learn C with our recommended free books and free tutorials.


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