Latex formula to C/C++ code converter

Question

I need to convert a math formula written in the Latex style to the function of a C/C++ code. For example: y = sin(x)^2 would become something like

double y = sin(x) * sin(x);

or

double y = pow(sin(x), 2);

where x is a variable defined somewhere before. I mean that it should convert the latex formula to the C/C++ syntax. So that if there is a function y = G(x, y)^F(x) it doesn't matter what is G(x,y) and F(x), it is a problem of the programmer to define it. It will just generate

double y = pow(G(x, y), F(x)); 

When the formula is too complicated it will take some time to make include it in the C/C++ formula. Is there any way to do this conversion?

Answer 1

Emacs' built-in calculator calc-mode can do this (and much more). Your examples can be converted like this:

Put the formula in some emacs buffer

$ y = sin(x)^2 $

With the cursor in the formula, activate calc-embedded mode

M-x calc-embedded

Switch the display language to C:

M-x calc-c-language

There you are:

$ y == pow(sin(x), 2) $

Note that it interprets the '=' sign in latex as an equality, which results in '==' for C. The latex equivalent to Cs assignment operator '=' would be '\gets'.

More on this topic on Turong's blog

Answer 2

A mathematical equation, such as the ones in LaTeX, and a C expression are not interchangeable. The former states a relation between two terms, the latter defines an entity that can be evaluated, unambiguously yielding one value. a = b in C means 'take the value in variable b and store it in variable a', wheres in Math, it means 'in the current context, a and b are equal'. The first describes a computation process, the second describes a static fact. Consequently, the Math equation can be reversed: a = b is equivalent to b = a, but doing the same to the C equation yields something quite different.

To make matters worse, LaTeX formulae only contain the information needed to render the equations; often, this is not enough to capture their meaning.

Of course some LaTeX formulae, like your example, can be converted into C computations, but many others cannot, so any automated way of doing so would only make limited sense.

Answer 3

I know the question is too old, but I'll just add a reply anyway as a think it might help someone else later. The question popped up a lot for me in my searches.

I'm working on a tool that does something similar, in a public git repo

You'll have to put some artificial limitations on your latex input, that's out of question. Currently the tool I wrote only supports mul, div, add, sub, sqrt, pow, frac and sum as those are the only set of operations I need to handle, and the imposed limitations can be a bit loose by providing a preprocessor (see preproc.l for an [maybe not-so-good] example) that would clean away the raw latex input.