esc

esc (pronounced /esk/) is an Extensible Stack-based Calculator designed for efficiency and customizability. What does this mean?

• esc is stack-based, operating using a Reverse Polish Notation (RPN)-like syntax. Rather than typing 2 + 2 and pressing an equals key, you enter the two numbers 2 and 2 onto the stack, then choose + to add them. This can be slightly awkward at first, but it means no parentheses are necessary, and for most people it becomes faster and more elegant than the standard algebraic method with a small amount of practice. In addition, it is considerably easier to customize and program.

• esc is extensible. If you frequently need to multiply two numbers together, add five, and then divide the result by pi, you can add a function to the calculator to do this specific operation using a couple of lines of Python code. The extension features are simple enough to be accessible even to people who do not know Python or have little to no programming experience.

  esc operations are arbitrary Python code, so if you want to get fancy, they can get arbitrarily complicated. You can even call APIs to perform calculations or get data!

• esc is fast, simple, and terminal-based. All you need is a working terminal (at least 80×24) and your keyboard.

Contents

• User Manual
  • Installation
  • Terminology and Notation
  • Concepts
    • Stack
    • Commands
    • History
    • Registers
  • Exercises
    • Questions
    • Answers
  • Units
    • Operations on unitful quantities
    • Walkthrough
  • Plugins
    • Plugin location
    • Installing plugins
    • Finding plugins
• Developer Manual
  • Operations
    • Creating a plugin
    • Writing a function
    • Creating an @Operation
    • Writing tests
    • Putting it all together
    • Handling errors
  • Unit Handling
    • Built-in unit handling behaviors
    • Custom unit handling behaviors
    • Testing unit handlers
  • Menus
    • Creating new menus
    • Adding to existing menus
  • Constants
    • Constant()
  • Modes
    • Working with modes
    • Example
  • Debugging
    • ProgrammingError
  • Class Reference
    • EscCommands
    • StackItems
    • Registry
    • Exceptions

AI use in this documentation

Small portions of this esc documentation have been drafted or updated by Claude Code (particularly some of the docstrings). However, the vast majority of it is human-written from the start, and all of it has been thoroughly reviewed and edited by a human.

The author of esc sees a need to mention this limited amount of LLM use only because his personal LLM policy indicates he never publishes any English text written with LLMs without disclosing it.

Indices and tables

• Index

• Module Index

• Search Page