On Aug 28, 2015, at 9:50 AM, Gordon Messmer <gordon.messmer at gmail.com> wrote: > > On 08/28/2015 07:15 AM, Mike - st257 wrote: >> Thoughts as to why my BC functions aren't properly converting between bases? >> >> Decimal to binary or hex works fine, but not binary or hex to decimal and >> so forth. > > I'm not an expert in bc, so I might be wrong, but it looks like setting the ibase inside a function is simply too late. ibase affects how bc interprets input. Yes, and it’s a serious design mistake in bc, IMHO. No other programmable system I’ve ever used changes how numbers in program text are interpreted based on prior commands to the system. I wrote a long answer explaining this on the Unix & Linux Stack Exchange here: http://unix.stackexchange.com/a/199620