Is there an eval() function in Java?

Question

You can use the ScriptEngine class and evaluate it as a Javascript string.

ScriptEngineManager manager = new ScriptEngineManager();
ScriptEngine engine = manager.getEngineByName("js");
Object result = engine.eval("4*5");

There may be a better way, but this one works.

There is no standard Java class or method that will do what you want. Your options include:

• Select and use some third-party expression evaluation library. For example JEL or any of the half dozen libraries listed here.

• Wrap the expression in the Java source code for a class with an eval method, send that to the Java compiler, and then load the resulting compiled class.

• Use some scripting language that can be called from Java as an expression evaluator. Possibilities include Javascript¹, BeanShell, and so on. A JSR 223 compliant scripting language implementation can be called via the Scripting API.

• Write your own expression evaluator from scratch.

The first approach is probably simplest. The second and third approaches are a potential security risk if you get the expression to be evaluated from an untrusted user. (Think code injection.)

---

^{1 - Javascript in Java SE is a moving target. From Java 6, a version of Mozilla's Rhino Javascript implementation was bundled with Java SE. The in Java 8, it was superseded by Nashorn. In Java 11, Nashorn was deprecated, and finally dropped from the core codebase. As of 2021, both Rhino and Nashorn are being maintained as separate (non-Oracle) products, and Oracle's GraalVM has its own Javascript implementation.}

There are very few real use cases in which being able to evaluate a String as a fragment of Java code is necessary or desirable. That is, asking how to do this is really an XY problem: you actually have a different problem, which can be solved a different way.

First ask yourself, where did this String that you wish to evaluate come from? Did another part of your program generate it, or was it input provided by the user?

• Another part of my program generated it: so, you want one part of your program to decide the kind of operation to perform, but not perform the operation, and a second part that performs the chosen operation. Instead of generating and then evaluating a String, use the Strategy, Command or Builder design pattern, as appropriate for your particular case.

• It is user input: the user could input anything, including commands that, when executed, could cause your program to misbehave, crash, expose information that should be secret, damage persistent information (such as the content of a database), and other such nastiness. The only way to prevent that would be to parse the String yourself, check it was not malicious, and then evaluate it. But parsing it yourself is much of the work that the requested evalfunction would do, so you have saved yourself nothing. Worse still, checking that arbitrary Java was not malicious is impossible, because checking that is the halting problem.

• It is user input, but the syntax and semantics of permitted text to evaluate is greatly restricted: No general purpose facility can easily implement a general purpose parser and evaluator for whatever restricted syntax and semantics you have chosen. What you need to do is implement a parser and evaluator for your chosen syntax and semantics. If the task is simple, you could write a simple recursive-descent or finite-state-machine parser by hand. If the task is difficult, you could use a compiler-compiler (such as ANTLR) to do some of the work for you.

• I just want to implement a desktop calculator!: A homework assignment, eh? If you could implement the evaluation of the input expression using a provided eval function, it would not be much of a homework assignment, would it? Your program would be three lines long. Your instructor probably expects you to write the code for a simple arithmetic parser/evaluator. There is well known algorithm, shunting-yard, which you might find useful.

With Java 9, we get access to jshell, so one can write something like this:

import jdk.jshell.JShell;
import java.lang.StringBuilder;
import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.InputStreamReader;
import java.io.IOException;

public class Eval {
    public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
        try(JShell js = JShell.create(); BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(System.in))) {

            js.onSnippetEvent(snip -> {
                if (snip.status() == jdk.jshell.Snippet.Status.VALID) {
                    System.out.println("➜ " + snip.value());
                }
            });

            System.out.print("> ");
            for (String line = br.readLine(); line != null; line = br.readLine()) {
                js.eval(js.sourceCodeAnalysis().analyzeCompletion(line).source());
                System.out.print("> ");
            }
        }
    }
}

Sample run:

> 1 + 2 / 4 * 3
➜ 1
> 32 * 121
➜ 3872
> 4 * 5
➜ 20
> 121 * 51
➜ 6171
>

Slightly op, but that's what Java currently has to offer

I could advise you to use Exp4j. It is easy to understand as you can see from the following example code:

Expression e = new ExpressionBuilder("3 * sin(y) - 2 / (x - 2)")
    .variables("x", "y")
    .build()
    .setVariable("x", 2.3)
    .setVariable("y", 3.14);
double result = e.evaluate();

No, you can not have a generic "eval" in Java (or any compiled language). Unless you're willing to write a Java compiler AND a JVM to be executed inside of your Java program.

Yes, you can have some library to evaluate numeric algebraic expressions like the one above - see this thread for discussion.