Semantics of EV (plaintext)



"Stavros Macrakis" <stavros.macrakis@verizon.net> writes:

> Well... it turns out that symbols and quoted expressions are
> special-cased. They get pre-evaluated in ev - even with noeval. This
> is a feature, to allow things like ev(%,numer) or ev(d23/d24,numer)
> instead of requiring ev(''%,numer) and ev(''(d23/d24),numer). But
> the result is that the semantics are a mess.

Isn't this EV's central idea, actually, since in its basic form

EV(<expression>) == ?MEVAL(?MEVALATOMS('(<expression>)))

EV(<expression>,NOEVAL) == ?MEVALATOMS('(<expression>))

modulo simplification and disrepping.

Maybe we could rewrite the manual entry as an elaboration on this
basic theme.

Wolfgang