bc seems to run fine, but the addition of mathlib causes a segfault with the most trivial operation.
I found this https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=27514
which attributes the problem to compilation with optimisation: With O set to zero, they say the problem goes away -- do you believe I have the same problem? because I suspect some other part of the libraries has become corrupted in my installation.
I'm still using 4.0, which I have expanded beyond its flavour, and I'm running it off a small hard-disk partition.