Using bc in bash script

[Charles Howse]

> On Thu, Aug 14, 2003 at 10:46:45AM -0500, Charles Howse wrote:
> > Hello List,
> > 
> > I've migrated from Redhat Linux 9 to FreeBSD 4.8-RELEASE, 
> character mode
> > - no gui.
> > 
> > I'm trying to calculate the number of seconds between 
> $start_time and
> > $end_time in a bash script.
> > 
> > Start_time=`date +%s` # Seconds past midnight at start of script
> > [ do lots of stuff ]
> > End_time=`date +%s`   # Seconds past midnight at end of script
> > 
> > Then I want to: et=`bc $end_time - $start_time` to get the number of
> > seconds or fractions of seconds elapsed.
> How about:
> 
> et=`echo "$end_time - $start_time" | bc`

Hi Jez, thanks for the reply!

As my daughter would say, "Well, DUHHHHHHH!"
That worked fine, it reported 0 seconds.
Can I refine it to give me something like: .784 seconds?