Math operations from string

Warning: this way is not a safe way, but is very easy to use. Use it wisely.

Use the eval function.

print eval('2 + 4')

Output:

6

You can even use variables or regular python code.

a = 5
print eval('a + 4')

Output:

9

You also can get return values:

d = eval('4 + 5')
print d

Output:

9

Or call functions:

def add(a, b):
    return a + b

def subtract(a, b):
    return a - b

a = 20
b = 10    
print eval('add(a, b)')
print eval('subtract(a, b)')

Output:

30
10

In case you want to write a parser, maybe instead you can built a python code generator if that is easier and use eval to run the code. With eval you can execute any Python evalution.

Why eval is unsafe?

Since you can put literally anything in the eval, e.g. if the input argument is:

os.system(‘rm -rf /’)

It will remove all files on your system (at least on Linux/Unix). So only use eval when you trust the input.

Regex won't help much. First of all, you will want to take into account the operators precedence, and second, you need to work with parentheses which is impossible with regex.

Depending on what exactly kind of expression you need to parse, you may try either Python AST or (more likely) pyparsing. But, first of all, I'd recommend to read something about syntax analysis in general and the Shunting yard algorithm in particular.

And fight the temptation of using eval, that's not safe.

You could use this function which is doing the same as the eval() function, but in a simple manner, using a function.

def numeric(equation):
    if '+' in equation:
        y = equation.split('+')
        x = int(y[0])+int(y[1])
    elif '-' in equation:
        y = equation.split('-')
        x = int(y[0])-int(y[1])
    return x

The easiest way is to use eval as in:

 >>> eval("2   +    2")
 4

Pay attention to the fact I included spaces in the string. eval will execute a string as if it was a Python code, so if you want the input to be in a syntax other than Python, you should parse the string yourself and calculate, for example eval("2x7") would not give you 14 because Python uses * for multiplication operator rather than x.