spbi

spbi is a CLI application written in C for splitting bills easily.

Installation

Simply clone the project, then build and optionally install the executable using make.

git clone https://github.com/sorousherafat/spbi.git
cd spbi/
make
sudo make install

Usage

Important

Before running spbi, please ensure that both cpp (the C preprocessor) and column are installed and available on your PATH. Both are usually available by default on a UNIX machine.

spbi takes a single argument: the path to an input file. It reads this file, processes its content, and outputs the result to the standard output.

Input File Format

The input file should contain a series of statements in the following format:

<person> += <amount> : <people>

• <person>: The identifier of the individual who has loaned money.
• <amount>: A number or a more complex expression representing the loaned amount.
• <people>: A list of recipients. This list is defined by identifiers separated by the + and - operators. The + operator includes a person in the split, while the - operator excludes them, if they are included on the list.

For example:

alice += 100 * 2 : bob + charlie + dave - dave

indicates that alice has loaned an amount of 100 which will be split equally among bob and charlie (with dave excluded).

Builtin Functions and Preprocessing

• count: A builtin function that takes a list of people as input and returns the number of people. This can be useful for multiplying a single fee by the number of recipients.

Before processing, spbi runs the C preprocessor (cpp) on the input file. This allows you to write macros for more powerful expressions. For instance, you might define:

#define all a + b + c

After which, using all - c in your file will represent the list consisting of a and b.

License

This project is licensed under the GPL-3.0 license.