Bash script: specify bc output number format

Can you put the bc usage into a little better context? What are you using the results of bc for?

Given the following in a file called some_math.bc

scale=6
output=1/2
print output

on the command line I can do the following to add a zero:

$ bc -q some_math.bc | awk '{printf "%08f\n", $0}'
0.500000

If I only needed the output string to have a zero for formatting purposes, I'd use awk.