Re: [Maxima-users] What is special about the variable c ?

James Amundson wrote:

>On Tue, 2004-08-17 at 07:46, Helge Hafting wrote:
>  
>
>>The documentation states that capitalization matters, i.e. x and X are 
>>separate.
>>    
>>
>
>Actually, it's more complicated than that. Lowercase symbols are
>converted to uppercase when they are first created if the uppercase
>version already exists. There is general (if not universal) consensus
>that this behavior needs to be changed. We plan to make case sensitivity
>straightforward (x and X will always be different) in Maxima 5.9.2.
>
>  
>
>>Thats fine, but this seems to not apply to "c"?
>>    
>>
>
>There are several symbols that get mysteriously upcased because of the
>behavior defined above. "c" is one of them. (Actually, I think that "c"
>will no longer be mysteriously upcased in 5.9.1, but it's really an
>accident.) 
>
>  
>
>>(C1)  a+A+b+B+c+C+d+D;
>>(D1)  d + D + 2 C + b + B + a + A
>>    
>>
>
>Ouch. This is a particularly bad example. 
>  
>
I discovered it while trying out some simple ax²+bx+c stuff.

>It's partly bug, partly bad design. This sort of weird behavior should
>be fixed once and for all in the 5.9.2 release of Maxima.
>
>  
>
Good to hear.  Not only known stuff, but also a planned fix. :-)

>--Jim
>
>P.S. Even though there is a legacy maxima-users list on sourceforge, all
>the real discussion goes on in maxima@www.ma.utexas.edu.
>  
>
Thanks.  I found sourceforge via information from the debain package I 
installed.

Helge Hafting