public/subjects/devops/division/README.md

division

Instructions

In this exercise, you will make a script division.sh that will take two arguments from the command line, and divide the first one by the second one.

If there is a remainder after doing the division, it should be ignored.

You will need to handle what to do when the inputs are wrong:

• If the divisor is 0 you will need to output Error: division by zero is not allowed.

• If the arguments are not numbers, the output should be Error: both arguments must be numeric.

• In the case where the number of arguments are not enough, the output should be Error: two numbers must be provided.

Your script should handle very large numbers as well.

For this exercise the use of the test command is not allowed.

Usage

$ ./divide.sh 4 1
4
$

Hints

You can use the following to help you solve this exercise:

Bash conditional construct can be used to decide whether to execute a specific command. Below an example script.sh.

#!/usr/bin/env bash
if [[ 1 > 2 ]]; then
    echo "true"
else
    echo "false"
fi

And its output:

$ bash script.sh
false

It is possible to combine several conditions with the AND (&&) and OR (||) logical operators. Below and example script.sh.

if [[ 1 > 2 ]] || [[ 1 == 1 ]]; then
    echo "true"
else
    echo "false"
fi
if [[ 1 > 2 ]] && [[ 1 == 1 ]]; then
    echo "true"
else
    echo "false"
fi

And its output:

true
false

bc is a Unix utility that performs arbitrary precision arithmetic. It is particularly useful to handle numbers that are too large. One way of using it is as below:

$ echo "2 + 2" | bc
4
$