list of commands for spotlight calculator

[theman]

the spotlight calculator is a great idea, but so far, it seems to only be able to do the 4 basic functions +-/* as well as using parentheses (eg (4/5)+(2*7))

am i missing something, or can it do more? i tried to use ^ to do exponents, but that doesn't work. also trigonometric functions don't work... sin cos tan

i really just need exponents and trig. oh, and maybe log and e^ ??

is there a list of commands for it somewhere, or is it just meant to be a basic 4 function calculator?

and in that case, is there any way i can get a more functional calc that i can type into instead of clicking buttons?

 

[xUKHCx]

This came up when Leopard was first out in a discussion I was involved in, the answer

You can see a full list of functions by searching for "Abbreviations used in Calculator" in Calculator's help.

For example these were all taken directly from there and put into spotlight, worked a charm.

cos(0.123)
pow(3,2)
log(5)
log(5)

BTW You can type in calculator.app

 

[theman]

oh, haha, i didn't realize you could type... i am used to CRAP windows calc. haha thanks.

 

[notjustjay]

BTW You can type in calculator.app

Really?! I'll try that when I get home!

I remember years ago I needed to do some basic work with matrices and I was too cheap to buy Matlab, and too honest to pirate it... So I sat down with a compiler and created "Matcalc", a simple knock-off which had just enough functionality to get my work done.

Here's hoping that the next OS X comes with something similar ... though I suppose you could just fire up Python and start typing...