Wise Monks,

I myself am terrible at regular expressions and after poking around the monastery for a while trying to discover the knowledge necessary to complete this task, I decided to bring this question to you're attention. I am attempting to calculate the atomic weight of chemical compounds. The compounds are given in the format Pb(CO3)2. So the weight would be calculated as follows:

compound atomic wieght = atomic weight Pb + 2*(atomic weight C + 3*atomic weight O)

I thought that I could store the atomic weight values in a hash with the keys being the elements and the values being the weights. I would then parse out the chemicals and their associated multipliers with a regular expression. Having this information I would be able to calculate the atomic weight. I’m not sure if this is even the right approach but it seemed reasonable to me. So if you could either point me in the direction of some useful modules or provide a helpful regex I would be much in your debt. Thanks heaps!

-Hokie

Update: Fixed spelling error in title

In reply to Regular Expressions and atomic weights by hokie

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