Script to replace "a^b" in an expression with "pow(a,b)"

[Provost Harrison]

Believe it or not, I can figure out how I would get it to do it in BBC Assembler (6502 processor) but not in some modern fancy language

[BlackCat]

Originally posted by Provost Harrison
Believe it or not, I can figure out how I would get it to do it in BBC Assembler (6502 processor) but not in some modern fancy language

If you could do it on a Z80 running CPM, I maybe will have some respect for you

[Urban Ranger]

Looks like a neat little problem for writing a clever regex.

[Mercator]

Originally posted by Ramo
Mercator, I just installed Active Perl. Now, how would I run your script?

I'm assuming your formulas are in a text file (or multiple files), with a formula preferably on one line (or at least not having a line break in between one such power construction)...

The quickest way is to simply type it in on the command-line:

perl -pi.bak -e"s/(\w+(?:\([^()]*\))?)\^(\w*(?:\(.*?\))?)/pow($1,$2)/g;" your_formula_filename(s)

That'll perform a global search/replace and will even create backups, with an added .bak extension.


If you more conveniently want to save it as a perl script (which does exactly the same), so you can use it later. Create a file that looks like this:

#!/Perl/bin/perl.exe -pi.bak
s/(\w+(?:\([^()]*\))?)\^(\w*(?:\(.*?\))?)/pow($1,$2)/g;

Make sure the first line matches your actual Perl path.
You'd call that script like this:

perl the_perl_script formula_file1 formula_file2

*cough* And I'm a bit late with this, but you could achieve the same with a text editor supporting Perl regular expressions, like Arachnophilia. In that case you'd simply open the file and replace all:

(\w+(?:\([^()]*\))?)\^(\w*(?:\(.*?\))?)

by:

pow($1,$2)

[alva]

Originally posted by BlackCat
Forget about doing that automaticlly - it's a waste of time. Also drop using MS tools - they sucks - use vi (no, this is not std MS bashing - I work on both unix and MS platforms, and vi is the winner).

Bleh, Visual studio.

And to think, that was going be the name of my next DL...

I dare you.

[Provost Harrison]

Originally posted by BlackCat


If you could do it on a Z80 running CPM, I maybe will have some respect for you

I don't know the specific instruction set, but I know roughly how I would do it