Evaluating a string as a mathematical expression in JavaScript

Question

How do I parse and evaluate a mathematical expression in a string (e.g. \'1+1\') without invoking eval(string) to yield its numerical value?

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Answer 1

You could use a for loop to check if the string contains any invalid characters and then use a try...catch with eval to check if the calculation throws an error like eval("2++") would.

function evaluateMath(str) {
  for (var i = 0; i < str.length; i++) {
    if (isNaN(str[i]) && !['+', '-', '/', '*', '%', '**'].includes(str[i])) {
      return NaN;
    }
  }
  
  
  try {
    return eval(str)
  } catch (e) {
    if (e.name !== 'SyntaxError') throw e
    return NaN;
  }
}

console.log(evaluateMath('2 + 6'))

or instead of a function, you could set Math.eval

Math.eval = function(str) {
  for (var i = 0; i < str.length; i++) {
    if (isNaN(str[i]) && !['+', '-', '/', '*', '%', '**'].includes(str[i])) {
      return NaN;
    }
  }
  
  
  try {
    return eval(str)
  } catch (e) {
    if (e.name !== 'SyntaxError') throw e
    return NaN;
  }
}

console.log(Math.eval('2 + 6'))