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up vote 6 down vote favorite
1

I want to store the value of 2^500 in the variable DELTA.

I'm doing 

export DELTA=$(echo "scale=2; 2^500" | bc)

but this does not set DELTA to 3273390607896141870013189696827599152216642046043064789483291368096133796404674554883270092325904157150886684127560071009217256545885393053328527589376. Instead, it sets it to 

32733906078961418700131896968275991522166420460430647894832913680961\
33796404674554883270092325904157150886684127560071009217256545885393\
053328527589376

I tried the answers in this question (3 years old), using 

export DELTA=$(echo "scale=2; 2^500" | bc | tr '\n' ' ')

or 

export DELTA=$(echo "scale=2; print 2^500" | bc | tr '\n' ' ')

but none of them work for setting the variable, only to echo it. Any idea?

share|improve this question
    
try setting BC_LINE_LENGTH like Stephane does in this answer: unix.stackexchange.com/a/176966/70524 –  muru 2 days ago
4  
You already got the answer(s), I only want to add that you don't need echo command. Instead use Here String redirection: bc <<< "scale=2; 2^500" –  jimmij 2 days ago

5 Answers 5

up vote 11 down vote accepted 
echo "scale=2; 2^500" | bc | tr -d '\n\\'

Output:

3273390607896141870013189696827599152216642046043064789483291368096133796404674554883270092325904157150886684127560071009217256545885393053328527589376
share|improve this answer
    
I though that tr works only with one char at a time ? oO –  sputnick 2 days ago
up vote 14 down vote

In the GNU implementation of bc, there is the environment variable BC_LINE_LENGTH (cf man bc):

~$ echo "scale=2; 2^500" | bc
32733906078961418700131896968275991522166420460430647894832913680961\
33796404674554883270092325904157150886684127560071009217256545885393\
053328527589376
~$ export BC_LINE_LENGTH=99999 #or better 0
~$ echo "scale=2; 2^500" | bc
3273390607896141870013189696827599152216642046043064789483291368096133796404674554883270092325904157150886684127560071009217256545885393053328527589376
share|improve this answer
    
Thanks for the edit @Stéphane Chazelas :) –  fredtantini 2 days ago
    
I like this solution most, except that BC_LINE_LENGTH=0 does not work in my machine (Mac OS X), and I'm using really big numbers, so changing BC_LINE_LENGTH depending on the number is not enough for me. +1 in any case. –  J. C. Leitão 2 days ago
up vote 3 down vote

Thinking outside the box:

export DELTA=$(python -c 'print(2**500)')
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up vote 2 down vote 
> echo "scale=2; 2^500" | bc | { read value; echo "$value";}
3273390607896141870013189696827599152216642046043064789483291368096133796404674554883270092325904157150886684127560071009217256545885393053328527589376
share|improve this answer
up vote 1 down vote 
$ echo "scale=2; 2^500" | bc | perl -pe 's/\\\n//'
3273390607896141870013189696827599152216642046043064789483291368096133796404674554883270092325904157150886684127560071009217256545885393053328527589376
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