Re: Base conversion within Base

[Eduardo A . Bustamante López]

> That said, I have no objection to Chet adding such a feature to Bash,
> if he can think of a sane way to do it.  If you have a patch that
> implements it, it's possible he'll be willing to review it.
I don't really see the point, that'd be just bloating the code base. That task
is easy to accomplish using the features that bash already offers:

address@hidden ~ % cat foo
convert() {
    local base=$1 numerals=$2 number=$3
    local result

    while ((number >= base)); do
         result=${numerals:number % base:1}$result
        ((number = number / base))
    done
    result=${numerals:number:1}$result

    echo "$result"
}

convert 23 0123456789abcdefghijklm 1040
convert 16 0123456789abcdef 255
convert  6 012345 123
convert  2 .- 10
convert  2 01 5
convert  8 01234567 16
address@hidden ~ % bash foo
1m5
ff
323
-.-.
101
20

The point of features is to accomplish things that are not already
possible, or that are possible, but with an insane amount of work. An
8 line function does what you want, with the features already
available.