--- Richard Fateman wrote:
> Maybe I should clarify.
>
> My guess: NOT A BUG.
OK.
> I don't know what ratsolve documentation
> says, since I haven't found any.
Neither have I - I probably shouldn't have used it. I just tried it
without reference to anything, not knowing if it even existed.
> but I am fairly confident that the questions you are asking
> it to solve ARE NOT VALID INPUTS.
> I looked briefly for the source code, not in SOLVE.lisp but NUSUM,
> and it is some translated function not written directly in lisp.
> Uncommented.
Oh joy.
> It seems that RATSOLVE finds only rational solutions to
> rational inputs. I don't know why anyone would use it, or why
> you are testing it. I don't know if there are any applications
> using it.
Basically an accident. I was so used to the ratsimp vs. simp thing I
just tried ratsolve as a reflex. Perhaps we should remove it, at least
as a user visible function? No documentation and odd functionality do
not a good user feature make.
> ratsolve is defined in macsyma, too.
> where it is also undocumented.
Is it used internally somewhere? If not I vote we depreciate it.
CY
__________________________________
Yahoo! Mail Mobile
Take Yahoo! Mail with you! Check email on your mobile phone.
http://mobile.yahoo.com/learn/mail