Best way to divide in bash using pipes?

Question

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
<         


        

Answer 1

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