Get ceiling integer from number in linux (BASH)

Question

How would I do something like:

ceiling(N/500)

N representing a number.

But in a linux bash script

Answer 1

Call out to a scripting language with a ceil function. Given $NUMBER:

python -c "from math import ceil; print ceil($NUMBER/500.0)"

or

perl -w -e "use POSIX; print ceil($NUMBER/500.0), qq{\n}"

Answer 2

Here's a solution using bc (which should be installed just about everywhere):

ceiling_divide() {
  ceiling_result=`echo "($1 + $2 - 1)/$2" | bc`
}

Here's another purely in bash:

# Call it with two numbers.
# It has no error checking.
# It places the result in a global since return() will sometimes truncate at 255.

# Short form from comments (thanks: Jonathan Leffler)
ceiling_divide() {
  ceiling_result=$((($1+$2-1)/$2))
}

# Long drawn out form.
ceiling_divide() {
  # Normal integer divide.
  ceiling_result=$(($1/$2))
  # If there is any remainder...
  if [ $(($1%$2)) -gt 0 ]; then
    # rount up to the next integer
    ceiling_result=$((ceiling_result + 1))
  fi
  # debugging
  # echo $ceiling_result
}

Answer 3

you can use awk

#!/bin/bash
number="$1"
divisor="$2"
ceiling() {
    awk -vnumber="$number" -vdiv="$divisor" '
    function ceiling(x){return (x == int(x)) ? x : int(x)+1 }
    BEGIN{ print ceiling(number/div) }'
}
ceiling

output

$ ./shell.sh 1.234 500
1

Or if there's a choice, you can use a better shell that does floating point, eg zsh

integer ceiling_result
ceiling_divide() {
  ceiling_result=$(($1/$2))
  echo $((ceiling_result+1))
}

ceiling_divide 1.234 500