How can I quickly sum all numbers in a file?
Solution 1:
You can use awk:
awk '{ sum += $1 } END { print sum }' file
Solution 2:
None of the solution thus far use paste. Here's one:
paste -sd+ filename | bc
As an example, calculate Σn where 1<=n<=100000:
$ seq 100000 | paste -sd+ | bc -l
5000050000
(For the curious, seq n would print a sequence of numbers from 1 to n given a positive number n.)