Based on the answer to this question, I would like to default scale = 2 every time I start bc from the command line (or from inside vim). However, man bc did not mention a .bcrc file, and when I experimentally created ~/.bcrc, it did not have any noticeable effect.
Is there an environmental variable or rc file that can be set to give default options to bc?
With GNU bc, you can set the environment variable BC_ENV_ARGS to be the name of a file that bc should read on startup.
Add the following to your .bashrc file :
export BC_ENV_ARGS=$HOME/.config/bcrc
if you need to load the standard math library, you can do this :
export BC_ENV_ARGS="-l $HOME/.config/.bcrc"
and you get a .bcrc like you wish.
Instead of environment variables, I created an alias
alias bc="bc -l .bcrc"
and that loads the file .bcrc when I run bc.
