Base-Changing Calculator

+ − × ÷

Base:

Here are some examples of the number format:

• 123
• 123.456
• -123.456
• 123^789
• -123.456^-789
• [NaN]
• [Infinity]
• -[Infinity]

Each base n uses the first n digits out of the the sequence (0-9A-Z). You don't have to worry about capitalization.

The '^' symbol is used in place of an 'e' so as not to conflict with bases over 14 that use 'e' as a digit. The number 1.2^4 is in scientific notation and should be read "one point two times ten to the fourth."

Internally, these numbers are represented as JavaScript numbers, which is to say they're IEEE-754 doubles. However, the display code isn't accurate to quite that level of precision, so it intentionally strips off the least significant digit.

About this project

I did this for a class assignment at Linfield College in 2008. It's an early example of the kind of immediate feedback UI I like to build, and at the time it was the only four-function calculator I'd seen that dealt with floating-point numbers in bases other than 10 or 2.