handle exponents on coefficients of polynomial terms

[evykassirer]

Right now there's this bug:

• (2x)^2 -> 2x^2 (instead of 4x^2)
• (-x)^2 -> -x^2 (instead of x^2)

There's nothing that handles exponents on simple polynomial terms like this. We should fix removeUnnecessaryParens to not remove parens if there's an exponent, and then implement the polynomial operation to do exponents on polynomial terms. (probably in its own tree search after divisionSearch?)

• (13 / 64) ^ 2 => 13^2 / 64^2
• (2x)^2 -> 2^2 x^2
• (2^x)^2 -> 2^(2*x)

thanks to @kevinbarabash for finding this

[shirleymiao]

Taking a crack at this!

[evykassirer]

not done yet! still need to add stuff to do exponent things

[shirleymiao]

and by "stuff to do exponent things," we still need to handle distributing the exponent to inner ops (namely, nested exponents, multiplication, division).

[evykassirer]

added some more clear tests in the description to show what the next steps should implement

[aelnaiem]

Can we close this issue and make a new one that clearly explains what needs to be done here. I'm not sure what @shirleymiao's PR already fixed and what hasn't been fixed yet.

[evykassirer]

sure! the bug is fixed, the examples at the bottom of the main issue description aren't

we still need to handle distributing the exponent to inner ops (namely, nested exponents, multiplication, division).