Counting calories with a few commands

Lets say you like to use the Linux shell for totaling up your calories. Maybe you've got a file something like this:

590<tab>soft beef tacos
290<tab>fish sandwich
380<tab>fries

You could manually calculate these or... you could use some nifty Linux programs. First lets get those numbers away from the rest of the file.

cat 20140211.calories | cut -f 1

gives you:

590
290
380

cut uses <tab> as the default delimiter and we want the first field.

Now you've got the numbers but they are not in a usable math expression so you can use "paste"

cat 20140211.calories | cut -f 1 | paste -s -d+

gives you:

590+290+380

now you just need to total it all up with "bc"


ExplainShell.com can give a complete break down:

cut -f 1 | paste -s -d+ | bc