expr 5 / 2

the out is 2, how do i get the output to display the decimal point ?

i tried awk with printf but can't seem to get the correct command do help plz

'expr' can only perform integer arithmetic. There are probably more suitable utilities but seen as I tend to use awk for everything...

echo 5 2 | awk '{print $1/$2}'

HTH

thanx guru, but what if i want to divide using variable ?

eg i=5
y=2

how do i use $i/$y ? i tried awk '{print $i/$y}' doesn't seem to work .. can give further guidance guru ?

Like this?

echo $i $y | awk '{print $1/$2}'

must i pass the variable into echo ? ... is there another way ? do you know what does awk 'printf' does ? i remember someone told me this but dont understand it

No, you needn't pass your variable in using echo. The thing is, awk must take an input from somewhere, so why not use echo? Awk doesn't have to work with, or output what you input but it does need something (otherwise it will expect you to enter input at the command line). You can get round this by doing your processing in a BEGIN block which includes an exit...

awk -v i=5 -v y=2 'BEGIN {print i/y; exit}'

The -v flag here is declaring variables to be used in the awk processing.

HTH

thanx guru

i found another way using bc

eg echo "scale=2; 5/2" | bc -l output 2.50 cause i put the scale 2

Hello jinroh,
what does the "eg" means in your posting ???

For further operations whith the result from awk in your script try this
i=5; y=2
echo $i
echo $y
x=`echo $i $y | awk '{
print $1/$2
}'`
echo $x

Output to screen is "2,50"

@Damian, thanks for your solutions. I´m very avid.

Greetings from Germany
Peter F.