I thank Robert Dodier for the clear explanation of Maxima arrays. A few
opinions
(1) Arrays in Macsyma are just plain broken; we shouldn't preserve
compatibility with them.
(2) Setting use_fast_arrrays to true in Maxima already breaks
compatibility with commercial Macsyma.
(3) I'd make use_fast_arrays : true the default and prevent a user from
resetting it. I don't think porting code
that uses array(name, dim, ...) to the make_array scheme should be all
that much work. I never used
Macsyma arrays; they couldn't be used as function arguments, so I never
trusted them.
(4) make_array doesn't honor the element-type
(C1) use_fast_arrays : true$
(C2) a : make_array('fixnum,10)$
(C3) a[0] : x;
(D3) x
(C4) a[1] : 4.5;
(D4) 4.5
(C5) a;
(D5) #($x 4.5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0)
This need to be cleaned up.
Barton