Subtract two variables in Bash

Question

I have the script below to subtract the counts of files between two directories but the COUNT= expression does not work. What is the correct syntax?

#!/usr/bin/env bash

FIRSTV=`ls -1 | wc -l`
cd ..
SECONDV=`ls -1 | wc -l`
COUNT=expr $FIRSTV-$SECONDV  ## -> gives 'command not found' error
echo $COUNT

Answer 1

Try this Bash syntax instead of trying to use an external program expr:

count=$((FIRSTV-SECONDV))

BTW, the correct syntax of using expr is:

count=$(expr $FIRSTV - $SECONDV)

But keep in mind using expr is going to be slower than the internal Bash syntax I provided above.

Answer 2

You just need a little extra whitespace around the minus sign, and backticks:

COUNT=`expr $FIRSTV - $SECONDV`

Be aware of the exit status:

The exit status is 0 if EXPRESSION is neither null nor 0, 1 if EXPRESSION is null or 0.

Keep this in mind when using the expression in a bash script in combination with set -e which will exit immediately if a command exits with a non-zero status.

Answer 3

You can use:

((count = FIRSTV - SECONDV))

to avoid invoking a separate process, as per the following transcript:

pax:~$ FIRSTV=7
pax:~$ SECONDV=2
pax:~$ ((count = FIRSTV - SECONDV))
pax:~$ echo $count
5

Answer 4

This is how I always do maths in Bash:

count=$(echo "$FIRSTV - $SECONDV"|bc)
echo $count

Answer 5

White space is important, expr expects its operands and operators as separate arguments. You also have to capture the output. Like this:

COUNT=$(expr $FIRSTV - $SECONDV)

but it's more common to use the builtin arithmetic expansion:

COUNT=$((FIRSTV - SECONDV))

Answer 6

For simple integer arithmetic, you can also use the builtin let command.

 ONE=1
 TWO=2
 let "THREE = $ONE + $TWO"
 echo $THREE
    3

For more info on let, look here.

Answer 7

Alternatively to the suggested 3 methods you can try let which carries out arithmetic operations on variables as follows:

let COUNT=$FIRSTV-$SECONDV

or

let COUNT=FIRSTV-SECONDV

Answer 8

Diff Real Positive Numbers

diff_real () {
  echo "df=($1 - $2); if (df < 0) { df=df* -1}; print df" | bc -l;
}

Usage

var_a=10
var_b=4

output=$(diff_real $var_a $var_b)
# 6

#########


var_a=4
var_b=10

output=$(diff_real $var_a $var_b)
# 6

Answer 9

Use BASH:

#!/bin/bash
# home/victoria/test.sh

START=$(date +"%s")                                     ## seconds since Epoch
for i in $(seq 1 10)
do
  sleep 1.5
  END=$(date +"%s")                                     ## integer
  TIME=$((END - START))                                 ## integer
  AVG_TIME=$(python -c "print(float($TIME/$i))")        ## int to float
  printf 'i: %i | elapsed time: %0.1f sec | avg. time: %0.3f\n' $i $TIME $AVG_TIME
  ((i++))                                               ## increment $i
done

Output

$ ./test.sh 
i: 1 | elapsed time: 1.0 sec | avg. time: 1.000
i: 2 | elapsed time: 3.0 sec | avg. time: 1.500
i: 3 | elapsed time: 5.0 sec | avg. time: 1.667
i: 4 | elapsed time: 6.0 sec | avg. time: 1.500
i: 5 | elapsed time: 8.0 sec | avg. time: 1.600
i: 6 | elapsed time: 9.0 sec | avg. time: 1.500
i: 7 | elapsed time: 11.0 sec | avg. time: 1.571
i: 8 | elapsed time: 12.0 sec | avg. time: 1.500
i: 9 | elapsed time: 14.0 sec | avg. time: 1.556
i: 10 | elapsed time: 15.0 sec | avg. time: 1.500
$

• Get current time in seconds since the Epoch on Linux, Bash