I second that Howard!

The only reason I wrote the perl program to compute all possible solutions, was because I figured that, being a small and easily computable set, I could perhaps simplify the algorithm! I did, as 3 types of parentheses constructs can be safely eliminated!

BTW: I'm now running the "updated" script, that will save all possible values, correct or not, but I'm doing this only for fun! I want to know if I'm right in my previous post...

Meanwhile, and this is not to blame Ruud, perl's floating point implementation is a LOT more robust: I ported the exact same script to KiXtart and (while taking loads more time to run! [Smile] ), it only found less than half the solutions! In fact, for some numbers, it wasn't even able to find ANY solution when the perl script DID find at least one! [Smile]

Again, KiXtart is certainly *not* the best tool for this "game" in case you're taking it a bit too serious, but it's a good tool for loads of other stuff!
_________________________
Later,   [b]Mad[/b]ruga