Turning a string into an programatic mathematical expression

[Steve Holden]

Daniel Bickett wrote:

> The title really says it all. I'm trying to take input from a user
> (intended to be a mathematical expression), from a text box for
> example, and evaluate it mathematically within the program. For
> clarification: the user inputs the string "4*5(3-3)", I would be
> interested in a straight-forward way to find the result of that, based
> only on a string. The follow-up question would be how to incorporate
> variables into the mix, however I'll leave it at that for now. Thanks
> for your time :)
> 
> Daniel Bickett

Well, you can simply use input(), a horrendously dangerous function that 
was designed (if that's the right word) in less security-minded times to 
allow users to enter expressions which would be made available to the 
program:

 >>> print input("What: ")
What: 4*5*(3-3)
0
 >>> print input("What: ")
What: 24+35/7
29
 >>>

Don't know whether this will help. It's also possible to use variables 
in your expressions:

 >>> a=33
 >>> b=15.5
 >>> print input("What: ")
What: a/b
2.12903225806
 >>>

Note that the inputs must be valid Python expressions, which 
unfortunately removes the possiblity of your implied multiplication:

 >>> print input("What: ")
What: 4*5(3-3)
Traceback (most recent call last):
   File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
   File "<string>", line 0, in ?
TypeError: 'int' object is not callable
 >>>

If this isn't going to help you then I'm afraid you'll have to get down 
and dirty by parsing the expressions and evaluating them in detail.

regards
  Steve
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