Defining an arbitrary polynomial

I am writing a function and it has to work for any polynomial so I was wondering how I could write a code that represents all polynomials

Answer 1

[Friedrich]

Hi,

have a look at the polynomial function from MATLAB:

http://www.mathworks.com/help/techdoc/ref/f16-5872.html#f16-6325

In general you store the coefficients only, so the vector [3,2,1] would represent 3x^2+2x+1. The rest can be done with the function from MATLAB, e.g. polyval

Answer 2

[Walter Roberson]

The Symbolic Math Toolbox has DOM_poly, objects of type 'polynomial', and there is the MuPAD-level function poly() to construct such objects. The facilities include the ability to designate the ring over which the arithmetic is to be done, so you can (for example) construct a polynomial over (say) GF(4), Galois Field 4. The routine Friedrich referred you to is for real-valued polynomials only and so is not suitable for your goal of writing code that represents all polynomials