Dc (computer program)

dc (desk calculator) is a cross-platform reverse-Polish calculator which supports arbitrary-precision arithmetic.

Written by Lorinda Cherry and Robert Morris at Bell Labs, it is one of the oldest Unix utilities, preceding even the invention of the C programming language.

Like other utilities of that vintage, it has a powerful set of features but terse syntax.

Traditionally, the bc calculator program (with infix notation) was implemented on top of dc.

This article provides some examples in an attempt to give a general flavour of the language; for a complete list of commands and syntax, one should consult the man page for one’s specific implementation.