WeBWorK Problems

How to Remove Parentheses in Units in parserNumberWithUnits.pl (when Using MathQuill)

How to Remove Parentheses in Units in parserNumberWithUnits.pl (when Using MathQuill)

by Paul Seeburger -
Number of replies: 0

I've seen that units sometimes return errors when using MathQuill, and it seems to me that this is usually only a result of extra parentheses that MathQuill adds into the unit part of the answer.

For example 10 N/m is changed to 10 (N/m).

And another user noted that 20ft^2 is changed to 20(ft)^(2) and that 20 ft^2 is changed to 20 ft^(2).

Requiring students to learn to use the text mode to accomplish this seems unnecessary and causes frustration for students who don't realize when this is needed.

It seems to me that it should be fairly easy to modify the macro named parserNumberWithUnits.pl to remove the parentheses from the units of the answer before checking them.  But I am not familiar enough with the macro's inner workings and perl's functions to remove parentheses to know the simplest way to do this.

Is this easy to do and thus fix this issue with MathQuill?  Or not?

I suppose a custom checker could also be used each time, but this seems less efficient.

Thanks!

Paul