Names of Bessel functions (Re: half integer bessel)



>>>>> "Barton" == Barton Willis <willisb@unk.edu> writes:

    Barton> My Macsyma (422) supports bessel_j(order, arg), bessel_j[order](arg),
    Barton> and bessel(arg,order). Weird. For Bessel functions of the second kind,
    Barton> Macsyma only supports bessel_y[order](arg).  Maxima supports
    Barton> bessel_j(arg, order), bessel_j[order](arg), and bessel(arg,order).

    Barton> (a) I generally expect the "main" argument to be the last. The
    Barton> Macsyma bessel_j function worked this way. How much trouble would
    Barton> it cause to switch uniformly to (order, arg)?

Not hard, I would think.

    Barton> (b) I think we should dump support for the functions i0, i1, in,
    Barton> j0, j1, jn, and bessel.  How smart is it to have a function named in?

Agreed.  Need to decide what to do about %j, %y, and friends.  These
are used in other places, unlike j0, j1, and friends.  I think I just
left j0, etc., for backward compatibility.  For 6.0, I think we could
remove these.

Ray