Every once in a while I have a need to plot some arbitrary mathematical function to see what it looks like. It happened to me recently when working on my FM Synth project, so I decided to whip up a quick-and-dirty plotting app.
The main issue with creating the app was how to allow for specifying the function(s) to be plotted. Obviously, I did not want to write a custom mathematical function parser. Instead, I leveraged the ability of .NET to create assemblies at runtime using the CodeDomProvider class.
I already had some code to do this that I used to allow runtime evaluation of C# expressions in the console of my city driving game, and I was able to repurpose it with very little effort.
The result is pretty cool. Any number of functions can be specified as arbitrary C# expressions. I dynamically create a class, and add the expressions as methods within it. I also a a special property, 'X', which returns the current X value of the plot. As you can see below, you can call one function from within another and use multiple lines of code.
The start and end values for X are also arbitrary expressions.
The use of CodeDomProvider to generate assemblies at runtime is definitely a very powerful tool that I'm sure I'll find more uses for.
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