"sum" quotes its arguments -- what's up with that?

--- Stavros Macrakis <macrakis@gmail.com> wrote:

> [...] this issue has been discussed at length. 

The reappearance of certain topics over a period of years
might be considered evidence that, in fact, something is wrong.

> The basic problem is that Maxima has no way of saying 
> that the first argument of 'sum' is evaluated in a scope
> where the iteration variable is locally bound without 
> using defmspec.

I do understand this motivation. It doesn't seem very
pressing, though. If i has an assigned value, then there
are simple workarounds -- quote i or use j instead.
On the other hand, there isn't any simple way to compensate
for the quoting of the summand.

There is an analogous and equally strong argument for
making "integrate" an mspec. Shouldn't "sum" and "integrate"
both be mspecs or both mfuns?

Regards,
Robert Dodier 


		
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