Multiplication on command line terminal

Question

I\'m using a serial terminal to provide input into our lab experiment. I found that using

$ echo \"5X5\"

just returns a string of \"

Answer 1

I have a simple script I use for this:

me@mycomputer:~$ cat /usr/local/bin/c

#!/bin/sh

echo "$*" | sed 's/x/\*/g' | bc -l

It changes x to * since * is a special character in the shell. Use it as follows:

• c 5x5
• c 5-4.2 + 1
• c '(5 + 5) * 30' (you still have to use quotes if the expression contains any parentheses).