Member Avatar for fsefsef23

If I want "3x²" to be output in my program, and I have a variable holding the "3" as float coeff and one holding the "2" as int expn, how do I go about displaying the polynomial using cout?

Do I need #include<cmath> as well?

thanks in advance.

Jess

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Short answer: the most portable console form is the caret form (e.g. 3x^2), but a nicer visual can be produced with Unicode superscript characters when the environment supports UTF-8. ’s approach of building the output string is exactly the right place to decide format; is right that consoles don’t magically render exponents; and ’s char(253) trick is a code-page dependent hack that will not behave consistently across platforms or terminals.

A practical, self-contained approach: convert the integer exponent into a string of Unicode superscript code points and append that to the coefficient and x. The snippet below uses universal-character-name escapes so the source stays ASCII-safe while producing UTF-8 at runtime (C++11+).

#include <iostream>
#include <string>

std::string toSuperscript(int n) {
    if (n == 0) return u8"\u2070";
    if (n < 0) return std::string("-") + toSuperscript(-n);
    static const std::string map[] = {
        u8"\u2070", u8"\u00B9", u8"\u00B2", u8"\u00B3",
        u8"\u2074", u8"\u2075", u8"\u2076", u8"\u2077",
        u8"\u2078", u8"\u2079"
    };
    std::string out;
    while (n > 0) { out = map[n % 10] + out; n /= 10; }
    return out;
}

int main() {
    int coeff = 3, expn = 12;
    std::cout << coeff << "x" << toSuperscript(expn) << '\n';
}

Notes and troubleshooting: many terminals on Linux/macOS already use UTF-8; on Windows the console often requires enabling UTF-8 (for example chcp 65001 or calling the Win32 API to set CP_UTF8) and a font that includes superscript glyphs. If the environment does not support UTF-8 or the required glyphs, fall back to x^n or x^(n). For publication-quality rendering (true superscript positioning), output to HTML, a GUI widget, or a typesetting system rather than a plain console.

Recommendation: default to x^n for widest compatibility, and use the Unicode helper above only when the terminal/consumer is known to support UTF-8.

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Member Avatar for mrnutty

This is just a logic problem. What part of this is troubling you?

A simple way to do this could be something like so :

for i = 0 to coefficients.size
   print coefficients[i] + "x" + "^" + i + " "

So in the simple example, say coefficients contains C = [2 0 1] which means "2x^2 + 0x^1 + 1x^0"

The above algorithm does exactly that.

Member Avatar for fsefsef23

Thanks! But when the program is compiled and ran, does it display 2x², or just 2x^2? Or does c++ not support the tiny corner number thing and instead we're simply looking at a way for the user to understand the rightmost number is an exponent?

Member Avatar for jonsca

does c++ not support the tiny corner number thing

Not natively. I'm not sure if you could find a library that would do it in a console app, but it's probably not worth it either way.

Member Avatar for user422 
std::cout << "3x" << char(253);
Member Avatar for jonsca

I suppose I stand corrected on that particular case (and for cubed also) but, those are special characters; in general, there is not a way to direct cout to print something as an exponent.

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