The program bc is a calculator language for Unix systems that supports arbitrary-precision arithmetic, meaning that numbers can have as many digits as the user wants. It was written at Bell Labs by Lorinda Cherry and Robert Morris, and it began as a friendlier front end to dc, an older reverse-Polish calculator. The language has a C-like syntax, with variables, functions, loops and conditions, and it can be used interactively or in scripts. It is specified in the POSIX standard, and the GNU implementation is widely used. Programmers often use it from the shell for calculations that need more precision than standard floating-point numbers, such as computing many digits of constants.
Before and after
More in Science & technology
- 25 April 1953Watson and Crick publish the structure of DNA
- 1973Mobile phone
- 20 November 1985Creation of Microsoft Windows
- 1996Discovery of copernicium
- August 2003Discovery of moscovium
- 2006Discovery of nihonium
The era
This moment belongs to the Contemporary world (1945 CE to today), the world since 1945. You can also browse everything in the 20th century.