proposal to include functions to read data from files

Hello all,

After writing the functions which I included in the previous 
message, I searched the mailing list archives and it turns out
reading from file comes up from time to time. In particular 
see the message from Barton Willis dated 2003/9/17, in which
he mentioned that he had written some functions.

Given the interest in such functions, I would like to propose
to the project administrators that some functions such as the
ones Barton wrote be included in the core functions.

For my part, I would like to see Maxima have functionality
that bridges the gap between purely symbolic and purely
numerical computation. I believe the combination will be
very powerful.

Some simple functions for reading lists of data will be
very helpful, and we could implement them soon. As a long-term
roadmap, I believe that S (as in R or S+) has very excellent
capabilities for data handling. In S, a file is loaded into
a "data frame" which contains descriptive data as well as 
numerical values. 

For what it's worth,
Robert Dodier


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