kalk

I recently received a very nice e-mail from my friend and former boss/colleague Frank Brokken:

Subject: kalk

Hi Karel,

Recently I saw the following:
  ICCE Numeric C-like KAreL's Kalculator V1.23
  Copyright (c) ICCE / Karel Kubat 1994. All rights reserved.

It dates from 1994: and still my favorite calculator on the computer. Much nicer to work with than any gui-wrapped application :-)

Cheers, Frank

Wow thanks! And incidentally, I have to agree - being a 'typist' guy myself, I also much rather use a calculator where you can type numbers, or copy & paste them. So here's to command line driven programs.

I remember writing Kalk years ago, when I was employed at the ICCE, State Univ. of Groningen. I was playing around with LALR-1 grammars, code generators (bison and flex) and C++. I recently took a good fresh look at the code, and found that it's an oddball fusion of C code generators (bison and flex), and C++ mixed with C-constructs like printf(). Nevertheless, it isn't half as bad as I'd thought it would be! Still readable, after all those years. I bet I could even do some minor bugfixing on it, or implement a new function.

Below is the README of kalk. If you like, download the archive kalk.tar.gz, unpack, and "make install".

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				    KALK

			Karel's C-like Kalkulator

		      Karel Kubat (karel@kubat.nl)

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Introduction
------------

    Kalk is my small calculator which emulates C's double precision
    expressions. In general, you can use Kalk just the way you'd use
    expressions or functions in C. Example (kalk> is the prompt):

        kalk> 3 + 12 / 11
	4.09091 ( (int)4 (long)4 )

    This way Kalk can be used to simply calculate with numbers. It
    shows the result as a floating number, but also as an integer or
    long. The 'standard' precedence rules are respected; e.g.,
    division is evaluated before addition.

    Kalk knows about hexadecimal input:

        kalk> 0xdeadbeef
	3.73593e+9

    Kalk also understands variables:
	
	kalk> a = 100
	kalk> b = 9
	kalk> a / b
	11.1111 ( (int)11 (long)11 )
	kalk> c = fmod (a, b)
	kalk> c
	1  ( (int)1 (long) 1 )

    Kalk evaluates variables as late as possible. E.g., you might
    change the value of 'a' and ask to evaluate 'c' again:

        kalk> a = 200
	kalk> c
	2 ( (int)2 (long)2 )

    Kalk supports a variety of operators (multiplication, division, etc.) and
    unary or binary functions. Unary functions include, e.g., sin(value);
    binary functions take two arguments and include, e.g., pow(a,b). Kalk
    internally always uses `doubles' to represent numbers, but you can use
    operators for integers too, though precision is then of course lost. E.g.,
    1<<2 left-shifts the number 1 over 2 bit positions. Also, Kalk
    supports three trigonometric modes: `deg', `rad' and `grad'.

    Using Kalk is fairly easy, you get used to it quickly. Just start it up
    and type `help'.


Copyright and distribution
--------------------------

    Kalk is distributed freely. As with everything that's free,
    there's also absolutely no warranty. However, Kalk shouldn't do
    more harm than produce a coredump (if this occurs, mail me!).

    Use Kalk at your own pleasure. If you like it, tell your friends about it.
    If you really like it, send me a postcard from a far-away place. If you
    don't like it, tough.

    I reserve the copyright to Kalk. If you make changes or additions, please
    mail me so that I have the latest version too.


Obtaining and Compiling Kalk
----------------------------

    The latest version of Kalk can be obtained at
    http://www.kubat.nl. The distribution is in the format
    kalk-X.YY.tar.gz, where X.YY is a version number.

    Don't mail me with questions or bug reports unless you're talking about
    the latest version.

    To unpack the archive, change-dir to your "sources" directory (e.g.,
    /usr/local/src) and unpack the archive. It will yield a subdirectory kalk
    with all sources therein.

    To compile and install Kalk, simply hit 'make install'. This will
    build a local kalk program and install it into
    /usr/local/bin. Edit the top level Makefile if you want to install
    to a different directory.

As of January 2013: I added the library "getline" to the archive for systems that don't have it on-board.

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