Imaginary Support / Equation Simplification

[NumberC]

Hello! Can exp4j work with imaginary numbers or simplifying equations with variables in anyway? If not, would it be theasible to add it as a feature? Thank you!

[shuvamc019]

This question is a little vague, could you elaborate a little bit on what you mean by this?

If you mean plugging in complex values for variables or evaluating expressions with complex coefficients, this likely would not work under the current model of exp4j since evaluated expressions always return a double. There would be no guarantee that the evaluated expression would only have a real part, and unfortunately, it may not be able to be expressed as a double.

If you have ideas on how to handle this, I would be open to hearing about them.

[aleppard]

I'm looking at integrating an expression parser into my project but I'd like to do calculations with higher precision e.g. 2^64-1 which can't be precisely calculated using a double (or even a long!).

I think the solution to support that and complex numbers is to move away from passing around doubles and working on them directly, but instead pass around a generic Number type which has different implementations, e.g. DoubleNumber, ComplexNumber, QuadNumber, etc. This would be further extendable to support fractions, and more esoteric math such as quarternions, octonions and other fields etc.

[RobertZenz]

I'm looking at integrating an expression parser into my project but I'd like to do calculations with higher precision e.g. 2^64-1 which can't be precisely calculated using a double (or even a long!).

That would be EvalEx then, which uses BigDecimal.

[aleppard]

Thanks I didn't know about that project.