creating an exponent

[waychol]

I'm trying to get my application to change "x^2" to "x" with an exponent of 2. How would I go about that? Thanks!

[MattW]

Originally Posted by waychol

I'm trying to get my application to change "x^2" to "x" with an exponent of 2. How would I go about that? Thanks!

Errr... huh?

You're going to need to provide more information if you want a response!

[waychol]

Originally Posted by MattW

Errr... huh?

You're going to need to provide more information if you want a response!

Sorry. Well I'm trying to create an application that solves equations that will have buttons to enter in variables, numbers, and operations, but I can't figure out how to recognize the "^2" in "x^2" and change it to a power/exponent.

[smithdale87]

You could use the componentsSeparatedByString: method to split that into a base and an exponent.

[baja_yu]

You may be looking for the pow() function, but it's not very clear from your post. EDIT: Disregard my post. You've made your intentions more clear, I replied without refreshing the page.

[waychol]

Originally Posted by smithdale87

You could use the componentsSeparatedByString: method to split that into a base and an exponent.

but on the actual view, what I'd like is for the exponent entered to actually change to become a superscript

[smithdale87]

Ok, that makes sense. You should have said so in the first place..

Are you drawing the text on the screen yourself? or you are using a text field or text view?

[waychol]

Originally Posted by smithdale87

Ok, that makes sense. You should have said so in the first place..

Are you drawing the text on the screen yourself? or you are using a text field or text view?

I have a textfield with buttons to input the variables (i.e. x,y,theta,r) and buttons to input the operations and numbers

[Duncan C]

Originally Posted by waychol

but on the actual view, what I'd like is for the exponent entered to actually change to become a superscript

Unfortunately iOS does not support rich text. You can make an entire text field have attributes like bold, italics, superscript, subscript, a particular font, etc. However, you can't have a mix of normal and superscripted text in the same field.

The only ready-made UI component that will do this is a UIWebView, and that is a very heavy-weight object to use just to display styled text.

If you have fixed expressions like base^exponent, you could use a combination of different fields placed on the window at specific locations, using fixed text attributes, and then install strings into those pre-existing fields.

If you're trying to handle a more general case where you want to be able to display arbitrary formulas like polynomials using standard algebraic notation, it will be tricky. There is a low level framework called Core Text that will let you display text with different fonts, styles, and attributes, but using that to compose algebraic formulas would be a pretty big job.

You could also just slap a web view onto your screen and feed it formatted HTML to display.

Apple really needs to add formatted text support to iOS.