>Since you haven't quoted any of the history of this thread, we can only >guess as to what "it" refers. If "it" is "bc", then your suggestion >about the 32 bit limitation is wrong. bc is an arbitrary precision >calculator. Now, you do need to specify the precision before a >calculation. That's what the "scale" command does. Also, if you wish to >use bc for floating point, then you need to invoke it with the -l (ell) >option. I know all that. My response was to the original question, and the it was the MS windows calculator. As I said I know and use bc. Btw no-one has mentioned that one can write programs for bc (not just use it interactively). This is a powerful feature if you need to do something repetitively. Peter -- http://www.piclist.com hint: The PICList is archived three different ways. See http://www.piclist.com/#archives for details.