Converting Fahrenheit to Celsius

You work in the analytics department for an Australian company that recently purchased an American company. The files and data from the US company are in the imperial system and need to be converted to metric. This sounds like a great opportunity to use your Bash skills to create a program which will assist.

Your task is to write a program that takes in a single number (a temperature in Fahrenheit) as an ARGV argument, converts it to Celsius and returns the new value. There may be decimal places so you will need to undertake calculations using the bc program.

At all times use 2 decimal places using the scale command for bc.

The formula for Fahrenheit to Celsius is:

C = (F - 32) x (5/9)

Remember, since we are using arguments, you will need to run your script from the terminal pane rather than 'run this file' button.

This exercise is part of the course

Introduction to Bash Scripting

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This exercise is part of the course

Introduction to Bash Scripting

IntermediateSkill Level

4.7+

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Save yourself time when performing complex repetitive tasks. You’ll begin this course by refreshing your knowledge of common command-line programs and arguments before quickly moving into the world of Bash scripting. You’ll create simple command-line pipelines and then transform these into Bash scripts. You’ll then boost your skills and learn about standard streams and feeding arguments to your Bash scripts.

Exercise 1: Introduction and refresher Exercise 2: Extracting scores with shell Exercise 3: Searching a book with shell Exercise 4: Your first Bash script Exercise 5: A simple Bash script Exercise 6: Shell pipelines to Bash scripts Exercise 7: Extract and edit using Bash scripts Exercise 8: Standard streams & arguments Exercise 9: Using arguments in Bash scripts Exercise 10: Using arguments with HR data

Master the bread and butter of Bash scripts—variables! In this chapter, you’ll learn how to create basic string and numeric variables, and perform calculations on these variables. You’ll also learn about the magic of a shell-within-a-shell (shell-ception), opening up huge opportunities for advanced scripting.

Exercise 1: Basic variables in Bash Exercise 2: Using variables in Bash Exercise 3: Shell within a shell Exercise 4: Numeric variables in Bash Exercise 5: Converting Fahrenheit to Celsius

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Exercise 6: Extracting data from files Exercise 7: Arrays in Bash Exercise 8: Creating an array Exercise 9: Creating associative arrays Exercise 10: Climate calculations in Bash

Life isn't always linear and neither should your Bash scripts. In this chapter, you’ll take your Bash scripts to the next level by learning control statements. You’ll learn the differences between FOR, WHILE, IF, and CASE statements and how to use them in your Bash scripts. Armed with these new tools, you’ll be ready to create more advanced Bash scripts with conditional logic.

Exercise 1: IF statements Exercise 2: Sorting model results Exercise 3: Moving relevant files Exercise 4: FOR loops & WHILE statements Exercise 5: A simple FOR loop Exercise 6: Correcting a WHILE statement Exercise 7: Cleaning up a directory Exercise 8: CASE statements Exercise 9: Days of the week with CASE Exercise 10: Moving model results with CASE Exercise 11: Finishing a CASE statement

Give your Bash scripts a powerful new addition by building useful functions to process data and variables. In this last chapter, you will learn the structure of functions in Bash, how to use functions to help automate frequent tasks, and program your scripts to run on schedule without needing to even lift a finger.

Exercise 1: Basic functions in Bash Exercise 2: Uploading model results to the cloud Exercise 3: Get the current day Exercise 4: Arguments, return values, and scope Exercise 5: A percentage calculator Exercise 6: Sports analytics function Exercise 7: Summing an array Exercise 8: Scheduling your scripts with Cron Exercise 9: Analyzing a crontab schedule Exercise 10: Creating cronjobs Exercise 11: Scheduling cronjobs with crontab Exercise 12: Thanks and wrap up