you should put your code up on pastebin or gist so it's readable.

I have an idea on where to go with the program.

I need to have the user input the string and do the parsee to the second half after the '*'. Then I need to multiply whole numbers by denominators then add that to the numerators. Then multiply numerator by numerator and denominator by denominator.

But I am completely lost on how to advance further. I tried to substring it after '*' and it did not do parsee at all, it gave errors! How can I do this efficiently?