UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi Don Cragun
I added to my previous post.
I think it's a better way to go.

Hi ongoto,
Did you even look at the problem statement for this thread: "How to round off a decimal number to higher whole number using ceil command in unix?"

Using printf is great if you want to round to the nearest integer. It is not even close to providing something that calculates the ceiling of a decimal number.

@ Don Cragun

I was thinking of a general solution to rounding, not strictly rounding up. My bad.

Setting precision to zero seems to do what the OP wants though. Have to wait and see.

No. It does not. As I said before: "Using printf is great if you want to round to the nearest integer. It is not even close to providing something that calculates the ceiling of a decimal number."

For example, using the sample input data provided by the OP:

Code:

printf '%.0f\n' 4.41 4.11 4.51

produces:

Code:

4
4
5

not the requested:

Code:

5
5
5

Is there some reason why you are so opposed to my suggestion in post #5 in this thread that actually produces the output requested by the OP?

No. I'm not opposing anyone. I'm just offering some options because there is no ceiling command in the shell that I know of. I've found several kludge solutions using Dr. Google; nothing absolute about 'ceiling'. bc is supposed to have a ceil() function, but I can't make it work on my system (Centos).

Since there is no absolute answer for the OP, he deserves some choices. That's all I'm doing here. No challenge to you or anyone else.

Your solution is excellent. I'll leave this thread alone.