Raymond Toy wrote:
>>>>>>"Richard" == Richard Fateman writes:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>
> Richard> 1. When Maxima asks questions like "is g1023 positive negative or zero?"
> Richard> then it is a bug. It is asking about generated symbols internal
> Richard> to a problem. This kind of bug continues to exist, and I
> Richard> have seen it in commercial macsyma, too. I don't know
> Richard> of any systematic way of removing these problems.
>
>I have seen this too. For the times I've seen this and investigated,
>they all seem to be normal Lisp symbols, instead of maxima symbols
>(preceded by $), so if this is true, it would be relatively easy to
>detect: If the symbol doesn't start with a $, we give up.
>
This tactic would convert the bug "Maxima asks the sign of an expression
including
newly-generated symbols" into the feature "Since some program
erroneously asks
for the sign of an expression including... , we will signal an error."
What we want to
do is fix the program that asked the question!.
Usually when Maxima asks "Is G00111 positive, ..." I respond that it is
positive, simply because it would otherwise be -G00111, right??
RJF
>
>This will probably break other things.
>
yes.
>
>I must say I don't particularly like conditionals. Yes, they're nice
>when you only have one condition, but when you have a lot, it becomes
>unwieldy.
>
>
>Ray
>
>