I'd add a carriage return at the end of the printout so that the BMI figure isn't mashed together with the following command problem.

Thus, the last line of the script would read:
echo $1 $2 | awk '{printf("%.1f kg/m²\n", 703.06958*$2/$1^2)}'

On Tue, 8 May 2012 02:14:34 -0500 (CDT)
Mike Miller <mbmiller+l at gmail.com> wrote:

> See my one-liner below, with documentation.
> 
> Body Mass Index, or BMI, is weight/height², but weight is in kilograms and 
> height is in meters, so the units are kg/m².  We usually measure height in 
> feet and inches and weight in pounds, so I wrote this little script for 
> computing BMI from height in inches and weight in pounds.  I call the 
> script "bmi".  Supposedly, if your BMI exceeds 30, you are obese and if it 
> exceeds 25, you are overweight.  A lot of us sit around too much, so we 
> are prone to gain weight and to get type-2 diabetes.  Good diet and 
> exercise are critical for prevention.
> 
> I just thought you might like the little piece of awk code.  I'm too lazy 
> to write out the if/else statements to get it to tell you if you are 
> underweight, normal, overweight or obese, or to tell you how many pounds 
> you should lose.  I might add that someday.  (I'm about 9 lbs overweight.)
> 
> Inevitably someone will point out that it doesn't distinguish fat mass 
> from muscle mass, which is true.  If you are unusually muscular, or the 
> opposite, you'll want to take that into account.  It turns out to 
> correlate very well with harder-to-obtain measures of body fat.
> 
> Mike
> 
> 
> ---------------begin script on next line----------------
> #!/bin/bash
> 
> # Computes your Body Mass Index (BMI) from height
> # in inches and weight in pounds
> #
> # Syntax:
> #
> # bmi num1 num2
> # 
> # where num1 is height in inches and
> #       num2 is weight in pounds
> #
> # http://www.nhlbisupport.com/bmi/
> #
> # Underweight = <18.5
> # Normal weight = 18.5–24.9
> # Overweight = 25–29.9
> # Obese = > 30
> 
> 
> echo $1 $2 | awk '{printf("%.1f kg/m²", 703.06958*$2/$1^2)}'
> --------------end script on previous line---------------


-- 
Jason Hsu <jhsu802701 at jasonhsu.com>