Doing simple math

I'm having a problem I don't think I should be having. Basically, I'm doing some simple math, and I'm having issues in making PHP do it (with the brackets in particular). An example that looks like it -should- work: $Math = sqrt(81)(5+4)-1; Well of course that doesn't work because of the (I believe) brackets. I'm unable to think of any easy alternative that wouldn't make reading/writing these things terribly messy/hard. The above examples I just pulled out of the air, but I need to deal with many groupings with brackets, various functions (pow() and sqrt() mostly) and basic addition and subtraction, which adds a greater complexity. Have I missed something obvious? Or am I doomed to do a bunch of smaller math things so that I can do these bigger ones? Thanks, Chris -- Chris Cameron UpNIX Internet Administrator ardvark.upnix.net bitbucket.upnix.net -- http://www.upnix.com