BASH from beginner to advanced: Solutions to Hackerrank Challenges - Episode 4: Arithmetic Operation

Our goal in this series is to document my thought process and solutions, and to focus on concepts and ideas rather than details. I will also be highlighting the differences between BASH and popular programming languages like Python and JavaScript.

BASH is a powerful command-line interface for interacting with an operating system. It's a shell, and the most popular one. It can be used directly in the terminal or in scripts, which are text files containing a series of instructions. BASH is particularly useful for tasks such as text processing, file operations, connecting multiple programs, and system maintenance. It is also portable, working by default on many platforms.

Bash is a command-line shell, and as such, it does not have built-in functionality for performing mathematical operations. However, Bash does have the capability to perform basic arithmetic using the expr command or the $((...)) notation. For example, to add 2 and 2 in Bash, you can use the following command:

expr 2 + 2

or

echo $((2 + 2))

Both of these commands will output "4". More complex mathematical operations can be performed using external commands such as bc.

echo "2+2" | bc

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