Computor

The goal of this project was to code a program resolving simple first and second degree polynomial equations.

Equation format

The input always has to be well formatted, there is no advanced parsing.
All the terms must be of the either forms :

• Degree 0: a * X^0 or a
• Degree 1: a * X^1 or a * X or X
• Degree 2: a * X^2 or X^2

eg.

monomial <+/-> monomial = 0
monomial <+/-> monomial = monomial <+/-> monomial
monomial <+/-> monomial <+/-> monomial = monomial <+/-> monomial

How to use the program

2 options:

Formula directly passed as program's argument

python3.7 computor.py formula

$> python3.7 computor.py "4 * X^0 - 9.3 * X^2 + 6 * X^1 = 0"

Formulas are stored in a file, using the -f option, read that file

python3.7 computor.py -f file

$> cat -e formulas.txt
5 * X^0 + 4 * X^1 = 4 * X^0$
27 * X^1 - 471 * X^0 = 31 * X^1 + 101 * X^0$
X + 42 - 4 * X^2 + X^1 + 2 = -3 * X^1 + X - 0.2 * X^2 - 3 * X$
$> python3.7 computor.py -f formulas.txt

Output format

$> python3.7 computor.py "4 * X^0 - 9.3 * X^2 + 6 * X^1 = 0"
Formula: [4 * X^0 - 9.3 * X^2 + 6 * X^1 = 0] # formula passed as parameter
Reduced form: 4.0 * X^0 + 6.0 * X^1 - 9.3 * X^2 = 0 # reduced formula's form
Natural form: 4.0 + 6.0X - 9.3X^2 = 0 # natural formula's form
Polynomial degree: 2 # equation's polynomial degree
D = 184.8 # discriminant's value
a = -9.3
b = 6.0
c = 4.0
Discriminant is strictly positive, the two solutions are: # result with number of solutions and their values
x1 = 1.0534471169017818
x2 = -0.40828582657920126

$> python3.7 computor.py "5 + 4 * X + X^2= X^2"
Formula: [5 + 4 * X + X^2= X^2]
Reduced form: 5 * X^0 + 4.0 * X^1 = 0
Natural form: 5 + 4.0X = 0
Polynomial degree: 1
a = 4.0
b = 5.0
The solution is: -1.25

Conclusion

This project was a good way to dive back into polynomial equations, even though not over complicated it was a good algorithmic exercice when equations needed to be parsed then reduced so it could be computed easily by applying the desired mathematical methods.
I chose python, even though I never used it before, it was a good way to learn a bit of its syntax and methods, it also made the logical implementation easier from parsing to reducing and executing.