Hmm, perhaps I should have been more specific.
On Sat, Mar 20, 2004 at 09:21:53PM -0500, Stavros Macrakis wrote:
> > (C2) EV(exp(1.0+sqrt(-1.0)),NUMER);
> > The documentation claims this should be expanded ...
>
> Starting with the symbolic expression:
>
> expr: exp(1+%i)$
>
> you can get the numeric value in rectangular form:
>
> rectform(expr),numer;
>
> or in polar form:
>
> polarform(expr),numer;
>
> I agree that the documentation needs to be improved. For that matter,
> the system's behavior could be more intuitive. The problem here is that
> Maxima does not treat %i as a "number".
Thank you; this solves half my question, and lets me do the
calculation I was trying to do. What I really wanted to ask was:
Suppose I have an expression whose value is a single definite number
(let's say a complex number). Is there some command I can issue so
that Maxima will tell me a floating-point approximation to that
number, regardless of what the expression is?
Will rectform and polarform followed by ev( ,numer) do this?
Given such a command, can it be applied to an expression with some
indeterminates to evaluate as far as possible? (for example, a
polynomial might have all its coefficients completely evaluated in
floating-point)
I realize that there may be functions Maxima knows something about but
cannot evaluate numerically (perhaps only for some arguments). But
that is surely not the case here...
I expect my background with MAPLE is showing here; MAPLE's "evalf"
function does exactly what I am describing, with a "digits" argument.
MAPLE's various shortcomings have encouraged me to seek an
alternative. I gather bfloats are the answer to "digits", but for
the moment I'm just trying to use Maxima like a better pocket calculator.
Thanks,
Andrew