Thread: So i was doing some algebra today....

...and thought about how much faster I could do it if i had some sort of tool to automate the BS of simplifying and solving equations...hmmmmmmm........DING!.....I have decided to take on the most complex computer program i have ever written (probably not real complex to any of you real coders though). After thinking about it all day, it turns out it will logically be a little harder than i thought.

I was wondering if anyopne had any advie on how to arrange and store my data for example:

Code:

 2-x                                  50x^3
------  + 8xyz^2 = 2(5 + x) -  ----------
 5*2                                    9

I'm having trouble trying to figure out how to arrange that into manageable data structures. One thing i know for sure is i would like to break the equation up into terms. The pitfall is in a fraction there may be one or more terms for either numerator and/or divisor....however a fraction IS a term... any advice on this ?

any advice on the project in general?

ok....i just remembered that you can split terms in a numerator up into seperate terms over a common divisor 4-1 / 6 = 4/6 -1/6 ....... but what if it's like 10 / 25 - 5? how do i break that down? or can i?

i haven't ran it yet or anything, but the idea is to take a string and convert it into type int, float, long, or long double.

would anyone implement this differently?...

Code:

template<class NumberType> NumberType parse(const char &stringOfNumbers)
{
      //some parsing algorithm

    //isn't there a header with these defintions?
    NumberType convertedNumber;
    int  sizeFloat = sizeof(float); 
    int longSize = sizeof(long);
    int longdoubleSize = sizeof(long double);

    switch(sizeof(NumberType))
    {
         case floatSize:
                    convertedNumber = atof(stringOfNumber, 10);  //stringOfNumbers = "1234.54"
                    break;
         case longSize:
                    convertedNumber = atol(stringOfNumbers, 10);
                     break;
           //.....................
     }

        

}

...oh yea....thanks for the previous advice

if anyone came to this thread looking for the same thing i did, then go to this url. this is exactly what i was looking for.

http://www.brpreiss.com/books/opus4/...00000000000000