Char arrays is it the right soultion for this problem

Question

I've got enumerated types with each enum constant a different behavior for some method. (+, - , /, *)
I take a string i.e "(5 + 4) * (4 - 2)"
and place each string char into this array
String expression = "(5 + 4) * (4 - 2)" ;
char[] c = express.toCharArray();
I've been trying figure out how inow apply my enums method to the char array. Taking boldBODMAS*bold* in account.
enum Operation {
PLUS { double eval(double x, double y) { return x + y; } }
What fristly was spliting the string at brackets
String[] temp = express.split("[()]");
This trunt out not to work weel for nested mathematical
expressions ie. (4 + (2 * (2 - 1))) * 1.2
I'm quite new to java programming, any ideas/direction on what i should do would be great guys, thanks.

Answer 1

Anthony42 wrote:
A while back I had to write an excel-type spreadsheet application, and we had to evaluate expressions and functions.
The easiest way we found to do it was to use a binary tree created from reverse polish notation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_Polish_notation
It should be fairly easy to do with a stack as well.Reverse Polish is a stack implementation. But first he will need to translate the infix operator precedence based notation into a postfix notation.
If this wasn't homework the OP would be able to choose something other than the traditional grade school arithmetic model he describes as BODMAS.