yea, its surprising

The triple chevron represents a Here String, which feeds the string on the right to the operation on the left(input redirection)

If you add or subtract zero, the result will not change, but there will be no unnecessary operation.

I also summed it up with zero.

happens to the best of us

I did :)

you have a point, but it really doesn't matter for simple problems like these

bc stands for basic calculator

asprintf() is a Linux function, not in standard C or POSIX. you must either declare it manually, or #define _GNU_SOURCE before you #include <stdio.h>

Would you mind to elaborate? It's almost the same solution in C.

In general you are right, but I think sizeof(char) is guaranteed 1 byte.

Thanks, but nothing special, in fact. Usual C practice.

Nope. Just a habit.