evaluating a string

[Matthew Dixon Cowles]

On Tue, 17 Oct 2000 04:01:24 GMT, prakash.ojha at hope.edu
<prakash.ojha at hope.edu> wrote:

>I am new to Python and would like to know how can I evaluate a string
>like "1+2*3/4" to give a numeric result. Is there any built in
>function that will give me this result. Any help would be greatly
>appreciated.

Since this is Python, the answer won't surprise you: the builtin
eval() will do what you want:

>>> eval("1+2*3/4")
2

Anticipating what may be your next question, the reason that it
doesn't give you 2.5 is that in Python, division of integers produces
an integer result.

Regards,
Matt