Greetings, and a question about sequences.

Hello, everyone.

I am new to the list and relatively new to Maxima, though I am not a
total newbie.  I have just started a technical calculus course, which
requires the use of Matlab, at a local college.  I asked my professor
if I could substitute Maxima, and he said that would be okay--as long
as I complete the worksheets, he doesn't care which CAS I use.  I am
using Maxima version 5.9.0 with GCL on a Redhat 8.0 system (i686).  I
am familiar with programming in various high-level languages, but lisp
is unfortunately not one of them (yet).

There is a document called "Matlab Basics" which I downloaded as part
of my calc course, and I was looking through it trying to find the
Maxima equivalents.  (If anyone wants to take a look, it is here:
http://www.nr.edu/chalmeta/175/MatLab_Basics.pdf -- it isn't necessary
to look at it to help me, though.)

Here is my problem: in Matlab, you set up an array of values in a
simple manner by using the ':' operator.  E.g.,

x=2:4

yields

x = 2 3 4

Or you can give a step value:

x=2:.5:4

yields

x = 2.0000 2.5000 3.0000 3.5000 4.0000

I have searched through the Maxima info pages, the docs on the
website, and the 2003 mailing list archives, but I have not found an
equivalent way to do this in Maxima.  I found out how to create a
list:

x:[2,4,6];

But is there any way to automatically fill it with a sequence?  I
tried using a FOR loop, but ran into problems with variable scope.
Plus, that seems a little cumbersome unless there is no other way.

Your help is greatly appreciated.  I'm sure I'll have more questions
before my class is over. :-)

Thanks,
Ben

-- 
Ben Logan
Google Answers Researcher
answers.google.com
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