How do I divide in the Linux console?

Question

I have to variables and I want to find the value of one divided by the other. What commands should I use to do this?

Answer 1

Something else you could do using raytrace's answer. You could use the stdout of another shell call using backticks to then do some calculations. For instance I wanted to know the file size of the top 100 lines from a couple of files. The original size from wc -c is in bytes, I want to know kilobytes. Here's what I did:

echo `cat * | head -n 100 | wc -c` / 1024 | bc -l

Answer 2

Example of integer division using bash to divide $a by $b:

echo $((a/b))

Answer 3

you can also use perl -e

perl -e 'print 67/8'

Answer 4

I assume that by Linux console you mean Bash.

If X and Y are your variables, $(($X / $Y)) returns what you ask for.

Answer 5

echo 5/2 | bc -l

2.50000000000000000000

this '-l' option in 'bc' allows floating results

Answer 6

You should try to use:

echo "scale=4;$variablename/3"|bc