Hacker News Reader

Comment by edwintorok | Hacker News Reader

It accepts more than just numbers though:

  >>> print input()
  "a"+"b"
  ab

View on HN

  try:print(lambda x:eval(x)if all(i in'0123456789.*/+-'for i in x)else'syntax error')(raw_input())
  except:print'error'

Mathematically, this is wrong.. a + b is not ab.

It's not symbolic...

Of course. I understand that "a" + "b" when taken to mean "concatenate the strings" is "ab" but OP's post was a calculator. It would not have yielded this result.

it's a feature

Reply on news.ycombinator.com