Evaluating a string as a mathematical expression in JavaScript

Question

How do I parse and evaluate a mathematical expression in a string (e.g. '1+1') without invoking eval(string) to yield its numerical value?

With that example, I want the function to accept '1+1' and return 2.

Solution 1

I've eventually gone for this solution, which works for summing positive and negative integers (and with a little modification to the regex will work for decimals too):

function sum(string) {
  return (string.match(/^(-?\d+)(\+-?\d+)*$/)) ? string.split('+').stringSum() : NaN;
}   

Array.prototype.stringSum = function() {
    var sum = 0;
    for(var k=0, kl=this.length;k<kl;k++)
    {
        sum += +this[k];
    }
    return sum;
}

I'm not sure if it's faster than eval(), but as I have to carry out the operation lots of times I'm far more comfortable runing this script than creating loads of instances of the javascript compiler

Solution 2

You can use the JavaScript Expression Evaluator library, which allows you to do stuff like:

Parser.evaluate("2 ^ x", { x: 3 });

Or mathjs, which allows stuff like:

math.eval('sin(45 deg) ^ 2');

I ended up choosing mathjs for one of my projects.

Solution 3

You can do + or - easily:

function addbits(s) {
  var total = 0,
      s = s.match(/[+\-]*(\.\d+|\d+(\.\d+)?)/g) || [];
      
  while (s.length) {
    total += parseFloat(s.shift());
  }
  return total;
}

var string = '1+23+4+5-30';
console.log(
  addbits(string)
)

More complicated math makes eval more attractive- and certainly simpler to write.

Solution 4

Somebody has to parse that string. If it's not the interpreter (via eval) then it'll need to be you, writing a parsing routine to extract numbers, operators, and anything else you want to support in a mathematical expression.

So, no, there isn't any (simple) way without eval. If you're concerned about security (because the input you're parsing isn't from a source you control), maybe you can check the input's format (via a whitelist regex filter) before passing it to eval?

Solution 5

An alternative to the excellent answer by @kennebec, using a shorter regular expression and allowing spaces between operators

function addbits(s) {
    var total = 0;
    s = s.replace(/\s/g, '').match(/[+\-]?([0-9\.\s]+)/g) || [];
    while(s.length) total += parseFloat(s.shift());
    return total;
}

Use it like

addbits('5 + 30 - 25.1 + 11');

Update

Here's a more optimised version

function addbits(s) {
    return (s.replace(/\s/g, '').match(/[+\-]?([0-9\.]+)/g) || [])
        .reduce(function(sum, value) {
            return parseFloat(sum) + parseFloat(value);
        });
}

View more solutions