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I'm trying to do a hex calculation directly with bc, I already specified the scale.

echo 'scale=16;c06b1000-c06a5e78' | bc

But I still get a zero. What could be wrong?

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echo 'ibase=16;C06D1000-C06A5E78' | bc 176520

Note that only UPPER CASE hex digits are supported as lower case ones would conflict with function and variable names, which is why you got 0 in your example (var1 - var2)

If you need the answer in hex too, just set the obase variable:

echo 'obase=16;ibase=16;C06D1000-C06A5E78' | bc 2B188

PS: FYI scale isn't designed for conversion base. From man bc:

scale defines how some operations use digits after the decimal point. The default value of scale is 0.
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  • 1
    So the real answer on 'what could be wrong' is that bc only supports UPPER CASE for the hex digits, with credits to editor Stephane. Commented Jan 10, 2019 at 10:23
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    Note that it's important to set obase before you set ibase. If you set ibase first, then it affects the value parsed for obase too. ie ibase = 16; obase = 16; sets obase to 0x16 = 22 Commented Dec 10, 2019 at 1:41
  • one more important moment. bc does not understand small letters. thats why we need to convert small letters to capital letters manually. $ { echo -n "obase=16; ibase=16; " ; echo " aaaabbbccc + 121323 " | tr '[:lower:]' '[:upper:]'; } | bc Commented Dec 14, 2024 at 15:48

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