calcalc: a toy calculator

This is a calculator for evaluating string expressions (e.g. '2*sin(3/5)', 'mass of the sun in kg'). The statement can be computed either locally or through querying WolframAlpha.

To install using pip: pip install calcalc-toy. To install via GitHub: https://github.com/yanglyu902/UCB-AY250-HW/tree/main/hw_3/my_package.

There are two ways to interact with the package:

Usage 1: from command line

Examples (inside the CalCalc folder):

This command evaluate a simple expression locally with the -s argument:

$ python CalCalc.py -s '2*sin(3)'
0.2822400161197344

This command calculates the mass of the moon through Wolfram with the -w argument. The result is displayed as a plain text:

$ python CalCalc.py -w 'mass of the moon in kg'
7.3459×10^22 kg (kilograms)

If we want to display a float instead, use the --float flag:

$ python CalCalc.py -w 'mass of the moon in kg' --float
7.3459e+22

Usage 2: inside python script/ipython

After pip install, import the calculator like this:

from calcalc.CalCalc import calculate

We can evaluate a simple expression locally:

In [1]: calculate('2*sin(3/5)+log(7)')
Out[2]: 3.075195095845384

We can evalute a Wolfram query using local=False:

In [1]: calculate('mass of the moon in kg', local=False)
Out[2]: 7.3459e+22

The default Wolfram output using python script/ipython is converted float to facilitate further computations (opposite to the command line behavior described above). To display a string instead, use return_float=False:

In [1]: calculate('mass of the moon in kg', local=False, return_float=False)
Out[2]: '7.3459×10^22 kg (kilograms)'