I agree, but I know based on the various iterations I've tried it's
quite possible to get into infinite loops with what's already there. I
think it's just a case of the user knowing what they are getting into
if they start messing with adding end-of-evaluation calls - infinite
looping is an inherant risk with this type of simplification work and
one just has to be careful. One possible solution to (or at least
avoidable case of) unintended looping is to define a function above
meval*, call that function from the toplevel, and include the special
call there. That way there is no chance of recursively calling the
special call, since everything relevant currently in Maxima calls
(AFAIK) meval* or meval, and by definition wouldn't reach that top
level. My concern is that I don't want to arbitrarily change such a
basic thing in Maxima without the broader community okaying it. I kept
thinking there should be some way within the functionality already
designed, but I've done enough prodding now to convince myself that
tellsimpafter wasn't intended to do what I have in mind, and it's my
guess that any solution we might find would be more hackish and harder
to maintain than defining a toplevel, standard, clean way to do it.
Incidently, thanks again Barton for all your help on this. This sucker
would be exactly nowhere without your know-how and patient help.
CY
--- Barton Willis wrote:
>
> We did play with hacking a extra line into meval* that did
> a post-simplification application of a user-defined function.
> It worked for the few cases I tested, but I got cold feet after
> imagining all the trouble I might cause--infinite loops, and etc.
>
> Barton
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