Bash limiting precision of floating point variables

A simple way is to use printf:

$ printf "%.3f\n" 0.005000000000
0.005

To remove the leading 0, just parse it out with sed:

$ printf "%.3f\n" 0.005000000000 | sed 's/^0//'
.005

There is a special variable called scale. You can set this variable to limit the precision.

EXAMPLE

$ echo "300/7" | bc -l
42.85714285714285714285

To limit the precision,

$ echo "scale=2; 300/7" | bc -l
42.85

UPDATED

$ echo "scale=3; 300/7" | bc -l | sed 's/[0-9]*\././g'
.857

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