Provided by: wcalc_2.4-3_amd64 bug

NAME

       wcalc - a natural-expression command-line calculator

SYNOPSIS

       wcalc [ options ] [ expression ... ]

DESCRIPTION

       wcalc  is a command-line calculator designed to accept all valid mathematical expressions.
       It supports all standard mathematical  operations,  parenthesis,  brackets,  trigonometric
       functions, hyperbolic trig functions, logs, and boolean operators.

       wcalc  accepts  input  in  a  variety  of  manners.  I it will evaluate If no mathematical
       expression is given at the commandline, it will evaluate the contents  of  an  environment
       variable  named  wcalc_input if one exists. If that variable is not set, wcalc will try to
       read input from standard input (i.e. piped input). If there is no input from  that,  wcalc
       enters "interactive" mode. Interactive mode has more features.

       Within  wcalc,  detailed information about commands, functions, symbols, and variables can
       be obtained by executing: \explain thing-to-explain

   OPTIONS
       -H or --help
           Prints a help usage message to standard output, then exits.

       -E  Specifies that numerical output should be in scientific notation.

       -EE Specifies that numerical output should NOT be in scientific notation.

       -PXXX
           Sets the precision  to  be  XXX.  This  setting  only  affects  output,  not  internal
           representations.  A  setting  of  -1  means formats output in whatever precision seems
           appropriate.
           Precision is set to autoadjust (-1) by default.
           Example: wcalc -P6

       -v or --version
           Prints the version number and exits.

       -d or -dec or --decimal
           Results are printed in decimal (base 10). This option is the  default,  and  does  not
           have a default prefix to indicate that numbers are in base 10.

       -h or -hex or --hexadecimal
           Results  are  printed  in hexadecimal (base 16). Numbers printed in hexadecimal have a
           prefix of 0x unless the -p or --prefixes option is used.

       -o or -oct or --octal
           Results are printed in octal (base 8). Numbers printed in octal have  a  prefix  of  0
           unless the -p or --prefixes option is used.

       -b or -bin or --binary
           Results  are printed in binary (base 2). Numbers printed in binary have a prefix of 0b
           unless the -p or --prefixes option is used.

       -p or --prefixes
           Toggles printing prefixes for hexadecimal, octal, and binary forms.

       -l or --lenient
           Makes the parser assume that uninitialized variables have a value of zero.

       -r or --radians
           Toggles whether trigonometric functions assume input (and output) is  in  radians.  By
           default, trigonometric functions assume input is in degrees.

       -q or --quiet
           Toggles whether the equals sign will be printed before the results.

       -c or --conservative
           Toggles  precision  guards. Because of the way floating point numbers are stored, some
           operations, like 1-.9-.1, can return an extremely small number that is not zero but is
           less than the official precision of the floating point number and thus for all intents
           and purposes, it is 0. The precision guard will round numbers to zero if they are less
           than  the  official precision of the floating point number. However, sometimes numbers
           that small or smaller need to be displayed, and thus the  precision  guard  should  be
           turned off.

       --remember
           Toggles  whether or not expressions that produce errors are remembered in the history.
           Does not affect command-line math.

       --round= { none | simple | sig_fig }
           Wcalc can attempt to warn you when numbers have been rounded in the output display. It
           has  two  methods of keeping track---either by using significant figures (sig_fig), or
           by a simple digit-counting algorithm. Rounding in the command-line version is  denoted
           by  a  tilde  before  the  equals sign (~=). Rounding in the GUI version is denoted by
           changing the text color to red. In some cases, Wcalc may think  that  the  number  has
           been  rounded  even  if  it  shouldn't have been necessary (this is because of the way
           floating point numbers are represented internally).

       --dsep=X
           Sets the decimal separator character to be X.

       --tsep=X
           Sets the thousands separator character to be X.

       --idsep=X
           Sets the input-only decimal separator character to be X.

       --itsep=X
           Sets the input-only thousands separator character to be X.

       --bitsXXXX
           Sets the number of bits of precision that will be used to internally represent numbers
           to  be  XXXX. The default is 1024. Set higher if you need more precision, set lower if
           you want to use less memory.

       --ints
           Toggles whether long  integers  will  be  abbreviated  or  not.  This  conflicts  with
           engineering notation for large numbers, but not for decimals.

USER-DEFINED VARIABLES

       Variables are supported and may be assigned using the = operator. To assign a variable use
       the form:

              foo = anylegalexpression

       Thereafter,  that  variable  name  is  the  same  as  the  literal  value  it  represents.
       Expressions can be stored in variables like this:

              foo = 'anylegalexpression'

       Expressions  stored  this  way  will  be  interpreted  at  evaluation  time,  rather  than
       assignment-time. Note that these cannot be recursive.

       All variables may also be stored with a description of what they are. This description  is
       added in the form of a quoted string after the assignment, like this:

              foo = 'anylegalexpression' 'description'

   ACTIVE VARIABLES
       Active  variables  are designed to give a functionality similar to user-defined functions.
       They are variables that rather than representing a value, represent an expression that  is
       evaluated  whenever  the variable is evaluated. This expression may contain other variable
       names. For example, after the following sequence of commands:

              foo=5
              bar='foo+4'

       The variable bar will evaluate to 9, or four more than whatever foo evaluates to be. These
       can be stacked, like so:

              baz='sin(bar)+foo'

       In  this  case,  baz  will  evaluate  to  be 5.15643, or the sin of whatever foo+4 is plus
       whatever foo is.

       To demonstrate the utility of these active variables, here are two  functions  written  by
       Stephen  M.  Lawson.  The  first computes the weekday of a given day (dy) in a given month
       (mo) in a given year (yr). The value it returns is in the range of 1  to  7,  where  1  is
       Sunday, 2 is Monday, 3 is Tuesday, and so forth.

       weekday='(((floor((yr  -  floor(0.6 + 1 / mo)) / 400) - floor((yr - floor(0.6 + 1 / mo)) /
       100) + floor((5 * (yr - floor(0.6 + 1 / mo))) / 4) + floor(13 * (mo + 12 * floor(0.6 + 1 /
       mo)  +  1)  /  5))  -  (7  *  floor((floor((yr - floor(0.6 + 1 / mo)) / 400) - floor((yr -
       floor(0.6 + 1 / mo)) / 100) + floor((5 * (yr - floor(0.6 + 1 / mo))) / 4) + floor(13 * (mo
       + 12 * floor(0.6 + 1 / mo) + 1) / 5)) / 7)) + 1) + 5 + dy) % 7 + 1'

       The  second function computes what day Easter will be for a given year (yr) and returns an
       offset from March 31st. For example, for the year 2005, it returns -4, which  means  March
       27th.  Because of leap-year problems, this only works from the year 1900 to 2099, but is a
       good demonstration nevertheless.

       easter='((19 * (yr - 19 * floor(yr / 19)) + 24) - floor((19 * (yr - 19 * floor(yr / 19)) +
       24) / 30) * 30) + ((2 * (yr - 4 * floor(yr / 4)) + 4 * (yr - 7 * floor(yr / 7)) + 6 * ((19
       * (yr - 19 * floor(yr / 19)) + 24) - floor((19 * (yr - 19 * floor(yr / 19)) + 24) / 30)  *
       30) + 5) - floor((2 * (yr - 4 * floor(yr / 4)) + 4 * (yr - 7 * floor(yr / 7)) + 6 * ((19 *
       (yr - 19 * floor(yr / 19)) + 24) - floor((19 * (yr - 19 * floor(yr / 19)) + 24)  /  30)  *
       30) + 5) / 7) * 7) - 9'

BUILT-IN SYMBOLS

       There are two basic kinds of built-in symbols in wcalc: functions and constants.

   FUNCTIONS
       The  functions  supported  in  wcalc  are  almost all self-explanatory. Here are the basic
       descriptions.

       sin cos tan cot
           The standard trigonometric functions

       asin acos atan acot or arcsin arccos arctan arccot or sin^-1 cos^-1 tan^-1 cot^-1
           The standard arc- trigonometric functions.

       sinh cosh tanh coth
           The standard hyperbolic trigonometric functions.

       asinh acosh atanh acoth or arcsinh arccosh arctanh  arccoth  or  sinh^-1  cosh^-1  tanh^-1
       coth^-1
           The standard arc- hyperbolic trigonometric functions.

       log ln logtwo
           Log-base-ten,  log-base-e  and  log-base-two,  respectively.  Remember,  you  can also
           construct log-base-X of number Y by computing log(Y)/log(X).

       round
           Returns the integral value nearest to the argument according to the  typical  rounding
           rules.

       abs Returns the absolute value of the argument.

       ceil ceiling floor
           Returns the ceiling or floor of the argument.

       sqrt cbrt
           The square and cube root functions.

       rand
           Returns a random number between 0 and the number given.

       irand
           Returns a random integer between 0 and the number given.

       fact
           Returns the factorial of a number.

       Gamma
           Returns the value of the Gamma function at that value.

       lnGamma
           Returns the value of the log Gamma function at that value.

       zeta
           Returns the value of the Riemann zeta function at that value.

       sinc
           Returns  the  sinc  function  (for  sinus  cardinalis) of the input, also known as the
           interpolation function, filtering function or the first spherical Bessel function,  is
           the product of a sine function and a monotonically decreasing function.

   CONSTANTS
       Wcalc  supports  a  lot  of  constants.  Some  are  special (like pi), and some are simply
       mathematical or physical constants that have been hardcoded in. The physics constants  are
       taken from http://physics.nist.gov/constants, and should all be in predictable SI units.

       The  value  of  pi  is special, as it is calculated to however many bits of precision have
       been specified with the \bits command. The default number of bits is 1024, or a value of:
       3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971693993751058209749445923078164062862089986280348253421170679821480865132823066470938446095505822317253594081284811174502841027019385211055596446229489549303819644288109756659334461284756482337867831652712019091456485669234603486104543266482133936072602491412737245869974724822361502823407955151120558811684656967313093357387193011055974127397801166600823447367841524950037348489795545416453901986117572722731871388422643588974212021713194956805142308399313566247553371620129340026051601856684677033122428187855479365508702723110143458240736806341798963338923286460351089772720817919599675133363110147505797173662675795471777702814318804385560929672479177350549251018537674006123614790110383192502897923367993783619310166679013187969315172579438604030363957033826325935372151289640167976948453904619615481368332936937026831888367580239969088932697527811653282224950410336573385944190516446146423694037380609059088222036945727944116946240616684848934170304346480406820774078369140625

       Similarly, all values that rely on the value of pi, like  mu0,  have  the  same  level  of
       precision.  Here  is  a  complete  list  of  the  symbols  used to represent the constants
       hardcoded into wcalc:

       e   The logarithm constant:
           2.718281828459045235360287471352662497757247093699959574966

       gamma
           Euler's Constant: 0.57721566490153286060651209008240243104215933593992359880576723488486772677766467093694706329174674951463144724980708248096050401448654283622417399764492353625350033374293733773767394279259525824709491600873520394816567

       K
           Catalan Constant: 0.91596559417721901505460351493238411077414937428167213426649811962176301977625476947935651292611510624857442261919619957903589880332585905943159473748115840699533202877331946051903872747816408786590902

       g   Acceleration due to gravity: 9.80665 m/s/s

       Cc  Coulomb's Constant: 8987551787.37

   Universal Constants
       Z0 or Zzero
           Impedance of Vacuum: 376.730313461 ohms

       epsilon0 or epsilonzero
           Permittivity of Free Space: 8.854187817e-12 F/m

       mu0 or muzero
           Permeability of Free Space calculated as 4*pi*10^-7.

       G   Gravitational Constant: 6.67259e-11

       h   Planck Constant: 6.6260755e-34

       c   Speed of Light: 299792458

   Electromagnetic Constants
       muB Bohr Magneton: 5.78838174943e-11 J/T

       muN Nuclear Magneton: 3.15245123824e-14 J/T

       G0  Conductance Quantum: 7.748091733e-5 S

       ec  Elementary Charge: 1.60217653e-19

       Kj  Josephson Constant: 483597.879e9 Hz/V

       Rk  Von Klitzing Constant: 25812.807449 omega

   Atomic and Nuclear Constants
       Malpha
           Alpha Particle Mass: 6.6446565e-27 kg

       a0  Bohr Radius: 5.291772108e-11 m

       Md  Deuteron Mass: 3.34358335e-27 kg

       Me  Electron Mass: 9.1093897e-31 kg

       re  Electron Radius: 2.817940325e-15 m

       eV  Electron Volt: 1.602177250e-12 J

       Gf  Fermi Coupling Constant: 1.16638e-5 GeV^-2

       alpha
           Fine Structure Constant: 7.29735253327e-3

       eh  Hartree Energy: 4.35974417e-18 J

       Mh  Helion Mass: 5.00641214e-27 kg

       Mmu Muon Mass: 1.88353140e-28 kg

       Mn  Neutron Mass: 1.67492728e-27 kg

       Mp  Proton Mass: 1.67262171e-27 kg

       Rinf
           Rydberg Constant: 10973731.568525 1/m

       Mt  Tau Mass: 3.16777e-27 kg

   Physio-Chemical Constants
       u   Atomic Mass Constant: 1.66053886e-27 kg

       Na or NA
           Avogadro's Constant: 6.0221367e23

       k   Boltzmann Constant: 1.3806505e-23

       F   Faraday Constant: 96485.3383 C/mol

       c1  First Radiation Constant: 3.74177138e-16 W m^2

       n0 or nzero
           Loschmidt Constant: 2.6867773e25 m^-3

       R   Molar Gas Constant: 8.314472

       Vm or NAk
           Molar Volume of Ideal Gas: 22.413996e-3 (m^3)/mol

       c2  Second Radiation Constant: 1.4387752e-2 m K

       sigma
           Stefan-Boltzmann Constant: 5.670400e-8

       b   Wien Displacement Law Constant: 2.8977686e-3 m K

   Random Constants
       random
           A Random Value

       irandom
           A Random Integer

SPECIAL SYMBOLS

       There are some special symbols that wcalc accept as input for compound operations.

       @Inf@  Symbol that represents Infinity

       @NaN@  Symbol that represents "Not a Number"

COMMANDS

       There are several commands that are supported in wcalc.

       \pXXX  Sets the  precision  to  XXX.  This  setting  only  affects  output,  not  internal
              representations.  A  setting of -1 means formats output in whatever precision seems
              appropriate.

       \e or \eng or \engineering
              Rotates between always using scientific notation, never using scientific  notation,
              and  choosing  to do scientific notation when convenient. Can also take an argument
              that is one of always, never, and automatic to choose a mode directly.

       \help or ?
              Displays a help screen.

       \prefs Prints out the current preference settings.

       \li or \list or \listvars
              Prints out the currently defined variables.

       \r or \radians
              Toggles between using and not using radians for trigonometric calculations.

       \cons or \conservative
              Toggles precision guards. Because of the way floating  point  numbers  are  stored,
              some  operations,  like  1-.9-.1,  can return an extremely small number that is not
              zero but is less than the official precision of the floating point number and  thus
              for  all  intents  and purposes, it is 0. The precision guard will round numbers to
              zero if they are less than the official precision of  the  floating  point  number.
              However, sometimes numbers that small or smaller need to be displayed, and thus the
              precision guard should be turned off.

       \p or \picky or \l or \lenient
              Toggles variable parsing rules. When wcalc is "picky" it will complain if  you  use
              undefined  variables.  If  it  is  "lenient",  wcalc  will  assume a value of 0 for
              undefined variables.

       \re or \remember or \remember_errors
              Toggles whether or not expressions  that  produce  errors  are  remembered  in  the
              history.

       \pre or \prefix or \prefixes
              Toggles the display of prefixes for hexadecimal, octal, and binary output.

       \b or \bin or \binary
              Results  are printed in binary (base 2). Numbers printed in binary have a prefix of
              0b unless the \prefixes command is used.

       \d or \dec or \decimal
              Results are printed in decimal (base 10). This option is the default, and does  not
              have a default prefix to indicate that numbers are in base 10.

       \h or \x or \hex or \hexadecimal
              Results are printed in hexadecimal (base 16). Numbers printed in hexadecimal have a
              prefix of 0x unless the \prefixes command is used.

       \o or \oct or \octal
              Results are printed in octal (base 8). Numbers printed in octal have a prefix of  0
              unless the \prefixes command is used.

       \round none|simple|sig_fig
              Wcalc can attempt to warn you when numbers have been rounded in the output display.
              It  has  two  methods  of  keeping  track---either  by  using  significant  figures
              (sig_fig),  or  by  a simple digit-counting algorithm. Rounding in the command-line
              version is denoted by a tilde before the equals sign  (~=).  Rounding  in  the  GUI
              version  is  denoted  by  changing  the text color to red. In some cases, Wcalc may
              think that the number has been rounded even if it  shouldn't  have  been  necessary
              (this is because of the way floating point numbers are represented internally).

       \dsepX Sets the decimal separator character to be X.

       \tsepX Sets the thousands-place separator character to be X.

       \idsepX
              Sets the input-only decimal separator character to be X.

       \itsepX
              Sets the input-only thousands-place separator character to be X.

       \hlimitX
              Sets the limit (X) on the length of the history.

       \openXXXXX
              Loads file XXXXX.

       \saveXXXXX
              Saves the history and variable list to a file, XXXXX.

       \bitsXXXX
              Sets  the  number  of  bits  of precision that will be used to internally represent
              numbers to be XXXX. The default is 1024. Set higher if you need more precision, set
              lower if you want to use less memory.

       \ints  Toggles  whether  long  integers  will  be  abbreviated or not. This conflicts with
              engineering notation for large numbers, but not for decimals.

       \prefs or \preferences
              Displays the current preference settings.

       \convert unit1 unit1
              Converts the previous answer from unit1 to unit2.

       \store variablename
              Saves the specified variable in the preload file, ~/.wcalc_preload

       \explain object
              Explains the specified object. The object can be a variable, constant, function, or
              command.

       \verbose
              Verbose mode displays the expression to be calculated before calculating it.

       \del or \delim or \delimiters
              Display delimiters in numerical output.

       \cmod  Toggle between C-style modulus operation and a more flexible method.

PREFERENCES

       Preferences  and  settings can be retained between invocations of wcalc by storing them in
       the file ~/.wcalcrc

       The format of the file is that each line is either blank or an  assignment.  Comments  are
       ignored,  and  are  defined  as  anything  to  the right of and including a hash mark (#).
       Assignments are of the form: key=value

       The possible keys are:

       precision
              A number defining the display precision. Equivalent to the  \P  command,  where  -1
              means  "auto"  and  anything else specifies the number of decimal places. This does
              not affect the behind-the-scenes precision.

       show_equals
              Either true ("yes" or "true") or false (anything else). Equivalent to  the  --quiet
              argument. Specifies whether answers will begin with an equals sign or not.

       engineering
              Either  "always",  "never", or "automatic". Equivalent to the \engineering command.
              Specifies whether answers will be displayed in engineering notation or not.

       use_radians
              Either true ("yes" or "true") or false (anything else). Equivalent to the  \radians
              command.  Specifies  whether  trigonometric  functions  accept  input in radians or
              degrees.

       print_prefixes
              Either true ("yes" or "true") or false (anything else). Equivalent to the \prefixes
              command. Specifies whether base prefixes (e.g. 0x for hexadecimal numbers) are used
              when displaying output.

       save_errors
              Either true  ("yes"  or  "true")  or  false  (anything  else).  Equivalent  to  the
              \remember_errors  command.  Specifies whether lines that contain a syntax error are
              added to the history or not.

       precision_guard
              Either true  ("yes"  or  "true")  or  false  (anything  else).  Equivalent  to  the
              \conservative  command.  Specifies  whether  the  display will attempt to eliminate
              numbers too small to be accurate (hopefully, these are only errors created  by  the
              binary approximation of the inputs).

       print_integers
              Either  true  ("yes"  or  "true") or false (anything else). Equivalent to the \ints
              command. Specifies whether whole integers will be printed  un-abbreviated  or  not.
              This conflicts with engineering notation for large integers, but not for decimals.

       print_delimiters
              Either  true  ("yes"  or  "true")  or  false  (anything  else).  Equivalent  to the
              \delimiters command. Specifies whether delimiters will  be  added  to  output  when
              displaying.

       thousands_delimiter
              Uses the next character after the equals sign as its value. Equivalent to the \tsep
              command. Specifies what the thousands  delimiter  is,  and  can  affect  output  if
              print_delimiters is enabled.

       decimal_delimiter
              Uses the next character after the equals sign as its value. Equivalent to the \dsep
              command. Specifies what the decimal delimiter is.

       input_thousands_delimiter
              Uses the next character after the equals sign  as  its  value.  Equivalent  to  the
              \itsep  command.  Specifies  what the input-only thousands delimiter is, and cannot
              affect output.

       input_decimal_delimiter
              Uses the next character after the equals sign  as  its  value.  Equivalent  to  the
              \idsep  command.  Specifies  what  the  input-only decimal delimiter is, and cannot
              affect output.

       history_limit
              Either "no", for no limit, or a number. Equivalent to the \hlimit command.

       output_format
              Either decimal, octal, binary, hex, or hexadecimal.

       rounding_indication
              Either no, simple, or sig_fig. Equivalent to the \rounding command.

       c_style_mod
              Either true ("yes" or "true") or false (anything else).  Equivalent  to  the  \cmod
              command.  Specifies whether the modulo operator (%) will behave as it does in the C
              programming language, or whether it will use a  more  flexible  method.  This  only
              affects  modulo operations where negative numbers are involved. As an example, with
              c_style_mod set to true (the default):

              -340 % 60 == -40; 340 % -60 == 40; -340 % -60 == -40

              However, with c_style_mod set to false:

              -340 % 60 == -40; 340 % -60 == -20; -340 % -60 == 20

PRELOAD

       Wcalc uses a file, ~/.wcalc_preload, to store persistent  information  between  instances.
       Typically,  this  is used to store variables that are frequently defined. This file can be
       edited by hand with a standard text editor. There is also a command within wcalc  (\store)
       to append a variable definition to the end of this file. Any variable defined in this file
       is defined and available for use in any subsequent invocation of wcalc.

COPYRIGHT

       wcalc is Copyright (C) 2000-2007 Kyle Wheeler.
       It is distributed under the GPL, version 2, or (at your option) any later version..

SUGGESTIONS AND BUG REPORTS

       Any bugs found should be reported to
       Kyle Wheeler at kyle-wcalc@memoryhole.net.

                                                                                         wcalc(1)