I wrote a program a while back to take an Infix expression ("2 + 2 * 3") and convert it to Postfix notation (Reverse Polish) and evaluate it. Worked like a charm, and can handle things as complex as "2 * (4 + 5 / 5 * sin(490.333))"
Now what I'm wondering is if there is any way to implement functions with a variable number of arguments. The only bright ideas I've had so far is "don't" and to keep the first thing on the stack as a "# of parameters", for those functions that need them. So, say log could take either 1 or 2 parameters, and took the form log(number, [base]), where base is the optional parameter. So far, I suppose I could write:
number 1 log
or
base number 2 log
But keeping the # of arguments like that seems like a kludge, especially if I ever want to actually use the RPN side as a human, and not just for evaluating the results of a infix conversion.
Any other ideas on how to implement this? Are there any RPN calculators out there with variable-number of argument functions - if so, how do they do it?
(Reverse Polish Notation (RPN), or postfix notation)