This is not really an answer to your question, (and perhaps this would be better posted to snippets) but here is the csh alias I wrote ages ago to be my command line calculator, that I thought you might find useful.

alias  calc  perl -e 'print  (!*) ; '
[download]

Usage:

calc 7+7

or

calc (24+11)*(8**2)

-monkfish (The Fishy Monk)