How to compare two floating point numbers in Bash?

Question

I am trying hard to compare two floating point numbers within a bash script. I have to variables, e.g.

let num1=3.17648e-22
let num2=1.5

No

Answer 1

I used the answers from here and put them in a function, you can use it like this:

is_first_floating_number_bigger 1.5 1.2
result="${__FUNCTION_RETURN}"

Once called, echo $result will be 1 in this case, otherwise 0.

The function:

is_first_floating_number_bigger () {
    number1="$1"
    number2="$2"

    [ ${number1%.*} -eq ${number2%.*} ] && [ ${number1#*.} \> ${number2#*.} ] || [ ${number1%.*} -gt ${number2%.*} ];
    result=$?
    if [ "$result" -eq 0 ]; then result=1; else result=0; fi

    __FUNCTION_RETURN="${result}"
}

Or a version with debug output:

is_first_floating_number_bigger () {
    number1="$1"
    number2="$2"

    echo "... is_first_floating_number_bigger: comparing ${number1} with ${number2} (to check if the first one is bigger)"

    [ ${number1%.*} -eq ${number2%.*} ] && [ ${number1#*.} \> ${number2#*.} ] || [ ${number1%.*} -gt ${number2%.*} ];
    result=$?
    if [ "$result" -eq 0 ]; then result=1; else result=0; fi

    echo "... is_first_floating_number_bigger: result is: ${result}"

    if [ "$result" -eq 0 ]; then
        echo "... is_first_floating_number_bigger: ${number1} is not bigger than ${number2}"
    else
        echo "... is_first_floating_number_bigger: ${number1} is bigger than ${number2}"
    fi

    __FUNCTION_RETURN="${result}"
}

Just save the function in a separated .sh file and include it like this:

. /path/to/the/new-file.sh