BC

bc, for basic calculator (often referred to as bench calculator), is "an arbitrary-precision calculator language" with syntax similar to the C programming language.

bc is typically used as either a mathematical scripting language or as an interactive mathematical shell. bc. Developer(s)

bc is also a command for DOS. The bc command is an interactive process that provides arbitrary-precision arithmetic. The bc command first reads any input files specified by the File parameter and then reads the standard input.

bc first appeared in Version 6 Unix in 1975. It was written by Lorinda Cherry of Bell Labs as a front end to dc, an arbitrary-precision calculator written by Robert Morris and Cherry. dc performed arbitrary-precision computations specified in reverse Polish notation. bc provided a conventional programming-language interface to the same capability via a simple compiler (a single yacc source file comprising a few hundred lines of code), which converted a C-like syntax into dc notation and piped the results through dc.

In 1991, POSIX rigorously defined and standardized bc. Three implementations of this standard survive today: The first is the traditional Unix implementation, a front-end to dc, which survives in Unix and Plan 9 systems. The second is the free software GNU bc, first released in 1991 by Philip A. Nelson. The GNU implementation has numerous extensions beyond the POSIX standard and is no longer a front-end to dc (it is a bytecode interpreter). The third is a re-implementation by OpenBSD in 2003.