linuxbashmath

Best way to divide in bash using pipes?

I'm just looking for an easy way to divide a number (or provide other math functions). Let's say I have the following command:

find . -name '*.mp4' | wc -l

How can I take the result of wc -l and divide it by 3?

The examples I've seen don't deal with re-directed out/in.

Solution

  • Using bc:

    $ bc -l <<< "scale=2;$(find . -name '*.mp4' | wc -l)/3"
2.33

    In contrast, the bash shell only performs integer arithmetic.

    Awk is also very powerful:

    $ find . -name '*.mp4' | wc -l | awk '{print $1/3}'
2.33333

    You don't even need wc if using awk:

    $ find . -name '*.mp4' | awk 'END {print NR/3}'
2.33333