I would take a functional-programming approach. First, I would put the desired mathematical operators in a hash that maps each operator's command-line form to the function that performs the operation:

  sub printN($)   { my $format = shift; sub { sprintf $format, @_ } }

  my %functions = (
      -power => sub { exp( $_[0] )},
      -log2  => sub { log( $_[0] )/log(2.0) },
      -loge  => sub { log( $_[0] ) },
      -log10 => sub { log( $_[0] )/log(10.0) },
      -round => sub { int($_[0] + ($_[0] <=> 0)*0.5) },
      -trunc => sub { int $_[0] },
      -f1    => printN "%.1f",
      -f2    => printN "%.2f",
      -f3    => printN "%.3f",
      -f4    => printN "%.4f",
      -f5    => printN "%.5f",
  );
[download]

(I used a helper function to build the printf functions for me.)

Second, I would parse the command line to extract, in order, the operators to be performed:

  my @func_pipeline = grep {$_} map {$functions{"$_"}} @ARGV;
  @ARGV = grep {!$functions{"$_"}} @ARGV;
[download]

At this point, @func_pipeline contains the functions corresponding to the operators we want to apply. I would then use function composition to glue the functions together, to result in a single function that performs the entire pipeline:

  sub compose($$) { my ($f, $g) = @_;   sub { $f->( $g->(@_) ) }    }
  sub id          { @_ }; # identity function

  my $composite_fn = reduce {compose($a,$b)} @func_pipeline, \&id;
[download]

(The above uses the ever-handy reduce from List::Util.)

Finally, I would apply the composite function to each word of input, line by line:

  print join ' ', map $composite_fn->($_), split while <>;
[download]

That's it. Putting it all together into a program, gives this:

  #!/usr/bin/perl -l

  use strict;
  use List::Util qw( reduce );

  sub printN($)   { my $format = shift; sub { sprintf $format, @_ } }
  sub compose($$) { my ($f, $g) = @_;   sub { $f->( $g->(@_) ) }    }
  sub id          { @_ }; # identity function

  my %functions = (
      -power => sub { exp( $_[0] )},
      -log2  => sub { log( $_[0] )/log(2.0) },
      -loge  => sub { log( $_[0] ) },
      -log10 => sub { log( $_[0] )/log(10.0) },
      -round => sub { int($_[0] + ($_[0] <=> 0)*0.5) },
      -trunc => sub { int $_[0] },
      -f1    => printN "%.1f",
      -f2    => printN "%.2f",
      -f3    => printN "%.3f",
      -f4    => printN "%.4f",
      -f5    => printN "%.5f",
  );   

  my @func_pipeline = grep {$_} map {$functions{"$_"}} @ARGV;
  @ARGV = grep {!$functions{"$_"}} @ARGV;
  my $composite_fn = reduce {compose($a,$b)} @func_pipeline, \&id;
  print join ' ', map $composite_fn->($_), split while <>;
[download]

As an example, let's print (with 4-digit precision) the result of "powering" the numbers 1 2 3:

  $ echo 1 2 3 | ./calc-pipeline -f4 -power
  2.7183 7.3891 20.0855
[download]

There you have it!

Cheers,
Tom

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