dc is pretty cool

dc (desk calculator) was one of the first computer programs ever written. It's supposedly the first program ever written on a PDP-11, and is still widely used today. If you're on a Unix system, there's a decent chance that you can run the dc command on a terminal right now.

$ dc
0 1
500ss[sqswlqlqlw+pdls>a]salax

dc is a postfix expression solver, which means that the operations go to the right of the operands, rather than in the middle; so instead of running "3 + 2", you'd run "3 2 +". Postfix operations nice because they're really easy to parse with a computer program. A general algorithm might go like this:

Begin copying your postfix expression from left to right onto a stack.
If you encounter a number, add it to the top of the stack and move on.
If you encounter an operation, remove the last two values on the stack, apply the operation, and add the result to the stack.

The expression "3 2 4 * + 5 -" might be parsed like this:

"3" is a number, copy it down.

Current stack: 3
"2" is a number, copy it down.

Current stack: 3, 2
"4" is a number, copy it down.

Current stack: 3, 2, 4
"*" is an operation. Take the last two numbers in the stack and replace them with the result. 2*4=8, so we replace both numbers with a single 8.

Current stack: 3, 8
"+" is an operation. Take the last two numbers in the stack and replace them with the result. 3+8=11, so we replace both numbers with a single 11.

Current stack: 11
"5" is a number, copy it down.

Current stack: 11, 5
"-" is an operation. Take the last two numbers in the stack and replace them with the result. 11-5=6, so we replace both numbers with a single 6.

Current stack: 6

At the end of this sequence, we should have one number left. This is our answer.

In dc, you can print out the value at the top of the stack with the p command, as well as the entire stack with the f command, like this:

In this case, the p command let us know there's a 7 at the top of the stack, and the f command let us know that the stack currently contains the values 3, 7 (the stack is written with one value per line, from the end to the beginning).

dc supports arbitrary precision arithmetic, as shown in this awesome demo from 1982 by Lorinda Cherry, one of the authors of dc. dc will automatically handle arithmetic with very large numbers, and you can specify some arbitrary decimal precision with the k command.

2 100 ^ p
1267650600228229401496703205376
30 k
2 v p
1.414213562373095048801688724209

The ^ command calculates an exponent, and the v command calculates a square root.

One of the more useful features of dc is its register system. If you need to use some value a bunch of times, you can store it in a register and load it back later. To demonstrate this, let's solve a simple kinematics problem:

A person is walking down the street. At some point, they decide to switch to a jog. It takes them 1.28 seconds to accelerate from 1.34 meters per second to 1.79 meters per second. How far did they run during that transition?

First, let's set up our environment and store all of our values into registers.

10 k      # set precision
1.34 si   # store initial velocity
1.79 sf   # store final velocity
1.28 st   # store time

Now let's calculate our acceleration

lf li -   # calculate change in velocity
lt /      # calculate acceleration
sa        # store acceleration

Finally, we can calculate our final answer

li lt * la lt 2 ^ * 2 / + p
2.0032000000

This person ran 2.00 meters while transitioning from a walk to a jog. Note that we didn't have to write out our time over and over again to do this calculation, we just put it into the t register at the beginning and reused that.

In addition to numbers, you can add strings to the stack by surrounding them in square brackets, like this:

[Hello world!]p
Hello world!

You can also execute strings as dc commands with the x command.

[1 2 +p]x
3

By combining strings and registers, you can make some really powerful dc programs:

# fibonacci calculator in dc

0 1       # initialize stack
500 ss    # set stopping point
[
  sq      # get large number
  sw      # get small number
  lq      # set new small number
  lqlw +  # calculate new large number
  p       # print the new parge number

  d       # duplicate the large number
  ls      # load the stopping point
  >a      # the large number is less than the stopping point, execute the macro
          # in the `a` register
]
salax     # store the loop in the `a` register and execute it

The > command pops the top two values in the stack. If the first is greater than the second, then executes the macro. From there, it's pretty easy to show that dc is turing complete.

# this macro gets the nth bit of a number
[
  Sa      # get the bit index
  2 La^/  # this division is basically a bit shift
  2 %     # this modulus gets the last bit
]sB

# this macro sets the nth bit of a number
[
  Sa      # get the new bit value
  Sb      # get the bit index
  Sc      # get the number

  # if the old bit isn't the same as the new bit
  # (the conditional logic comes later)
  [       
    la2*1-2lb^*  # hack to calculate the new value - the old value
    Lc+Sc # add the difference to the old value
  ]

  # if statement conditional logic
  Sd      # store if body in a temporary register
  lclblBx # get the old bit value
  la      # load the new bit value
  !=d     # execute the if body
  Lds_    # discard the temporary register

  Las_    # discard the top of stack `a`
  Lbs_    # discard the top of stack `b`
  Lc      # output the top of stack `c`
  Lds_
]sS

# this macro does a nand
[
  +       # add both operands

  # if the sum is 2 (both operands were a 1)
  [
    s_    # dispose of some garbage
    0     # output a zero
  ]

  Sa

  Sb      # load a 1
          # this will be the output if the conditional doesn't execute
          # otherwise, it gets disposed of
  1
  Lb

  2=a     # conditional logic
  Las_    # discard the top of stack `a`
]sN

0         # initialize memory
[
  # TODO: build a cpu out of nand gates

  lLx     # execute next clock cycle
]sLlLx    # begin cpu

ADDENDUM

This blog post was written quite hastily very late at night, and looking back I've just realized that dc is actually turing complete even without the comparison operators by using this nand function:
[
  +2/Sa1La-
]sN
Since we're only working with integer arithmetic, by adding both bits and dividing by two we essentially create an and gate. Subtracting the result of that and gate from 1 gives us a nand gate.

The S and L commands allow you to use registers as secondary stacks. I'm using them as local variables, but without them we could have just used more variable names.

This can be made a bit more concise with arrays

# this macro gets the nth bit of memory
# arguments: bit index
[
  ;m
]sB

# this macro sets the nth bit of memory
# arguments: new value, bit index
[
  :m
]sS

dc supports some very basic I/O. The ? command will take in a dc expression from the user and execute it. As used in this example, the P command prints the string at the top of the stack without a trailing newline.

10 k
[Enter a number in meters: ]P?
sm
[Here are some simple conversions:]p
[  Centimeters: ]Plm100*p
[  Inches: ]Plm100*2.54/p
[  Feet: ]Plm100*2.54/12/p

POSIX dc doesn't understand ASCII, but GNU dc does. In GNU dc, if the top of the stack is a number, the P prints it out as a base 256 ASCII string. Here's a Brainfuck interpreter using that functionality, combined with the tr command. In the spirit of Brainfuck (and because I'm too lazy to add comments), I'll leave it obfuscated:

(tr -dc '+-.,<>\[\]' | tr '+\-.,<>\[\]' '12345678' ; echo ; cat) | dc -e \
	'0sp0sh?[d10%lp:p10/lp1+spd0<x]sxlxxlp1-sp[lh;h1+lh:h]s1[lh;h1-lh:h]s2[lh;hP]s3[?lh:h]s4[lh1-sh]s5[lh1+sh]s6[1+]s+[1-]s-[lp1-splp;pd7=+8=-d0!={]s{[lp1+splp;pd8=+7=-d0!=}]s}[1l{xs_]s<[1l}xs_]s>[lh;h0=<]s7[lh;h0!=>]s8[lp;pd1=1d2=2d3=3d4=4d5=5d6=6d7=78=8lp1-splp0!>x]sxlxx'

Unfortunately dc doesn't allow you to take arbitrary user input, so with this code you're supposed to just enter in the ASCII codes of your inputs. I also didn't do any input validation, so if your brackets are mismatched and your programs crash then that's your fault.

There are a lot more interesting examples on the dc Wikipedia page, and in this excellent blog post.