How to calculate string type calculation

[TeNDoLLA]

Hello,
Say we have a string type variable holding a mathematical operations and I need to calculate this and put the answer in another variable eg.

$calc = '2+2*10'; 

Is there a some better way to do it without using eval? I got this working with eval(), but I am not sure if I want to use it.

Also another question, would using eval() be safe enough if I have pre defined users who are the only ones able to input these arithmetics to the script and in addition if I check that only numbers and arithmetic operators like +-/*. is allowed in the input?

[guido2004]

Is there a some better way to do it without using eval?

Another way would be to write a parser. Probably a lot more work though

Also another question, would using eval() be safe enough if I have pre defined users who are the only ones able to input these arithmetics to the script and in addition if I check that only numbers and arithmetic operators like +-/*. is allowed in the input?

I guess that it would be safe. But let's hear some more opinions.

[crmalibu]

If you want it to support parenthesis, as well as multiple operators in the same statement with different precedence, you will need a fair bit of code. I'd be willing to bet you can find existing code for this.

[TeNDoLLA]

Yeah I was also thinking of writing my own parser as a last resort but that would be definitely a lot more work than handled with eval().

[TeNDoLLA]

If you want it to support parenthesis, as well as multiple operators, you will need a fair bit of code. I'd be willing to bet you can find existing code for this.

I have tried searching from google with words like "parse mathematical expressions" etc.. without any success so far.

If you have any examples / tutorials for this I would appreciate it. It is not needed to be absolutely in php either. Some other languages will do fine also which will show some basic guidelines for doing it.

Also if anyone of you have some experience from this kind of things I would appreciate every tip that you can give. Like eg. what kind of things I need to consider if I write my own parser class etc.

[crmalibu]

A problem with eval() is you can't directly do things like square root, as the ^ character is a bitwise operator in php, you'd need to use pow(). So you're going to need to parse it at least a bit.

Sorry I don't have any links to any code for you. I know you could examine the source code of any programming language, but it might be a hairy read.

[TeNDoLLA]

Yeah.. well thanks for replies I'll have to see what I can do about it Looks like this subject is not very common in php.

[TeNDoLLA]

Hi again,
I got this script found on internet as a response on another forum. And this does the job same way almost that eval() does. Anyone care to explain me what exactly is happening in this script? How and what exactly does the mathematical operations in this one?

function calc_string( $mathString )
{
        $cf_DoCalc = create_function("", "return (" . $mathString . ");" );
       
        return $cf_DoCalc();
};

echo('<br>Result: ' . calc_string('3*4+2-13*(2.5*10*2*2/4)') );
echo('<br>Result: ' . calc_string('pow(10,3)') ); 

[QMonkey]

Discussion here from earlier this year:
http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?t=545041