Programmer calculator

The programmer calculator is a simple terminal tool designed to give maximum efficiency and flexibility to the programmer working with:

• binary, hexadecimal and decimal representations at the same time
• bitwise operations
• various operand sizes (16bits, 32bits, 8bits, etc)

and who likes:

• a clear, simple and customizable interface
• open source software
• terminal/cli tools

Making of

The idea was born while developing a Nintendo Gameboy Emulator. Romes - the pitcher - found that the tools given online were clunky and did not allow for "nice multitasking"

With the constant need to visualize and manipulate bits, it became evident that a better solution had to come to life

Installation

Homebrew

First, create a new tap

$ brew tap alt-romes/pcalc

Then, install the program

$ brew install pcalc

Arch Based Distros

Install from AUR

$ yay -S programmer-calculator

Building from Source (alternative)

To build from source you need gcc, ncurses, and the source files. If you don't have ncurses, please install it (i.e. with your system's package manager) first.

First, clone the repository

$ git clone https://github.com/alt-romes/programmer-calculator

Then, compile the code into an executable file

$ make

Finally, move the executable to a directory reachable by $PATH

$ mv -i output/pcalc /usr/local/bin

Updating

Either re-build from source, or, using brew do

$ brew update

followed by

$ brew upgrade pcalc

Running

Just run the programmer calculator program

$ pcalc

Features

Usage

There are various ways to insert values/operators, see the example 2 + 2 below:

• 2, followed by +, followed by 2
• 2, followed by +2
• 2+, followed by 2
• 2+2 (or 2 + 2+ 2, 2 +2, 2+ 2, ...)

You can also do inline math, but without priorities. This means 2 + 3 * 2 is valid, but it's equal to 10, not 8, because expressions are evaluated from left to right That said, any inline math is valid i.e.: 0x13 + 135 - 0b101 < 2 * 3 ~

Hex + Binary + Decimal

All three number representations are available at the same time, you can insert 0xff + 0b101101 - 5 directly onto the calculator

Operand Size

By default, 64 bits are used for arithmetic, however, when working with bits, quite often we want to work with less. With this calculator you can change the amount of bits used. the number displayed will be unsigned

To use 16 bits instead, type 16cb (cb for "change bits")

To use 8 bits, type 8cb

To use 0 < n <= 64 bits, type ncb

Customizing Interface

While running the calculator, you can type what you see for it to appear/disappear:

history to toggle the history decimal to toggle the decimal representation binary to toggle the binary representation hex to toggle the hexadecimal representation operation to toggle the operation display

To set a default interface, define an alias for the program with the desired hidden options

$ alias pcalc='pcalc -hbxdos'

h: history, b: binary, x: hex, d: decimal, o: operation, s: symbols

Operations

ADD  +    SUB  -    MUL  *    DIV  /    MOD  %
AND  &    OR   |    NOR  $    XOR  ^    NOT  ~
SL   <    SR   >    RL   (    RR   )    2's  '

• ADD: a + b arithmetic addition
• SUB: a - b arithmetic subtraction
• MUL: a * b arithmetic multiplication
• DIV: a / b arithmetic integer division
• MOD: a % b modulus from the division
• AND: a & b bit-wise AND (&) operation
• OR : a | b bit-wise OR (|) operation
• NOR: a $ b bit-wise NOR ($) operation : opposite of OR
• XOR: a ^ b bit-wise XOR (^) operation : exclusive OR
• NOT: a~ bit-wise NOT (~) operation : change all bits of a, 0's into 1's and 1's into 0's
• SL : a < b bit-wise SHIFT-LEFT (<) operation : shift a left b number of times
• SR : a > b bit-wise SHIFT-RIGHT (>) operation : shift a right b number of times
• RL : a ( b bit-wise ROTATE-LEFT (() operation : rotate a left b number of times
• RR : a ) b bit-wise ROTATE-LEFT ()) operation : rotate a right b number of times
• 2's: a' 2's complement (') operation : 2's complement of a

Todo

• Compare two numbers?
• Up arrow scrolls history (like a terminal)

---

example usage in iterm panel