bcal For Linux

Nowadays, almost everything is a simple Google search away. This includes almost any type of calculator you can think of. Be that as it may, if convenience and speed are what you're after, then a desktop app installed on your computer is arguably the better choice.

Take, for example, bcal (short for Byte Calculator). It's a tiny command-line utility that allows you to perform blazing-fast storage expression conversions and various calculations directly from the Terminal.

In short, bcal is a simple and remarkably lightweight command-line utility for people who work often with bits, bytes, addresses, and all sorts of binary prefixes, and value speed and efficiency above all else.

According to the app's GitHub page, "bcal is a REPL CLI utility for storage expression evaluation, SI/EC conversion, byte address calculation, base conversion, and LBA/CHS calculation."

Apart from the fact that it's a CLI app (and I usually enjoy most apps of this sort), I also like the fact that bcal has a "bc mode." bc is an arbitrary precision calculator language. In short, it's a language that supports arbitrary precision numbers with interactive execution of statements, very similar to the C programming language.

bcal can solve arithmetic expressions involving storage units, as well as perform a wide range of general-purpose calculations. Bcal helps users convert to IEC/SI standard data storage units, display addresses in bytes, display addresses as LBA:OFFSET, convert CHS to LBA (and vice versa), perform base conversion to binary, decimal and hex.

To get started with bcal, open a Terminal window, and type "bcal -h." This is the app's Help section which displays all the available positional arguments, optional arguments, prompt keys, and all the available commands.

By modern standards, bcal is hardly impressive. However, I still believe that there's nothing faster and more efficient than command-line apps, especially for somewhat straightforward tasks.

If your work revolves around bits, bytes, addresses, and binary prefixes, bcal is a very good choice.