I think what you're really after is the shunting yard algorithm, which converts/evaluates infix expressions and accounts for order of operations. Wikipedia has a good article on it. It also doesn't require making a tree, assuming that the expression can be evaluated at compile time.
Yeah, I saw that one by the time someone had already replied to my thread and realized that that one would be the one I was lookin' for. Sorry I didn't search the forums first