Yes, bc is useful. You can even pipe standard input into bc, and get the results of the calculations on standard output. bc -l used to be the invocation

Yes, bc is useful. You can even pipe standard input into bc, and get the results of the calculations on standard output. bc -l used to be the invocation I used a lot. I do that Google thing myself nowadays too :) They can even give answers to factorial(n) and the like. Found that recently. Wouldn't be surprised if a lot more too.