12 Sep
2014
12 Sep
'14
12:17 a.m.
Dave Horsfall scripsit:
That can't be right. Bc was just an overlay to dc that parsed bc
language, compiled it into dc language, and fed dc from a pipe (all the
output was direct from dc). So the arithmetic capabilities were exactly
the same.
I note that bc first appeared just about when bas(1) disappeared, so
perhaps there is a connection in their names.
--
John Cowan http://www.ccil.org/~cowan cowan(a)ccil.org
In the sciences, we are now uniquely privileged to sit side by side
with the giants on whose shoulders we stand. --Gerald Holton
I?d always
heard ?binary calculator? but I don?t have a good reference
for that.
I've heard "binary" because it used binary arithmetic (and limited
precision), and "basic" because it was a lot simpler than "dc" (which
I've
always thought was "decimal" calculator due to it using arbitrary
precision decimal arithmetic).