7.3 Object representation
As we saw previously, each polynomial has its indeterminate stored as a
string with a single alphabetic character. Remember that one polynomial might have an
indeterminate of 'x' while another might use 'z'. We don’t need to
worry about that now, but we will when it comes time to perform binary operations like addition
and multiplication.
We need to design how we represent multiple terms. Since all terms share the one
indeterminate, each term needs only int values for its
coefficient and exponent. I could put these in a list of lists and say that those are the
terms. Our polynomials
p = x2 + 7x + 1 and q = 4x3 – 7x2 + x – 9
could be represented as
[[1, 2], [7, 1], [1, 0]]
[[1, 2], [7, 1], [1, 0]]
and
[[4, 3], [-7, 2], [1, 1], [-9, 0]]
[[4, 3], [-7, 2], [1, 1], [...
