Ruby
Number of characters: 217 179
This is the shortest ruby solution up to now (one heavily based on RegExp yields incorrect answers when string contains few groups of parenthesis) -- no longer true. Solutions based on regex and substitution are shorter. This one is based on stack of accumulators and parses whole expression from left to right. It is re-entrant, and does not modify input string. It could be accused of breaking the rules of not using eval, as it calls Float's methods with identical names as their mathematical mnemonics (+,-,/,*).
Obfuscated code (old version, tweaked below):
def f(p);a,o=[0],['+']
p.sub(/-/,'+-').scan(/(?:(-?\d+(?:\.\d+)?)|(.))\s*/).each{|n|
q,w=n;case w;when'(';a<<0;o<<'+';when')';q=a.pop;else;o<
More obfuscated code:
def f(p);a,o=[0],[:+]
p.scan(/(?:(-?\d+(?:\.\d+)?)|(.))\s*/).each{|n|q,w=n;case w
when'(';a<<0;o<<:+;when')';q=a.pop;else;o<
Clean code:
def f(p)
accumulators, operands = [0], ['+']
p.gsub(/-/,'+-').scan(/(?:(-?\d+(?:\.\d+)?)|(.))\s*/).each do |n|
number, operand = n
case operand
when '('
accumulators << 0
operands << '+'
when ')'
number = accumulators.pop
operands.pop
else
operands[-1] = operand
end if number.nil?
accumulators[-1] = accumulators.last.method(operands[-1]).call(number.to_f) unless number.nil?
end
accumulators.first
end
