Aaron,
If you need a permutation function, consider the built-in
function permutations, which operates on sets:
permutations (set (a, b, c)) => {[a, b, c], [a, c, b], [b, a, c],
etc.
permutations is documented in share/contrib/nset/nset.html
(see http://cvs.sf.net/viewcvs.py/maxima/maxima/share/contrib/nset ).
The functions in share/sym were updated after the release
of version 5.9.1. You might consider getting the most recent
files from cvs,
http://cvs.sf.net/viewcvs.py/maxima/maxima/share/sym/ .
Latest sym files + GCL Maxima seems to work as intended --
permut ([a,b,c]) => [[a, b, c], [a, c, b], [b, a, c], etc
after some warnings.
With latest sym files + Clisp or CMUCL Maxima, I find permut
yields a Lisp error: "(LAMBDA (PERMU) (CONS '(MLIST) PERMU))
is not a function." I don't know what this is about.
I also tried some other sym functions (treillis, treinat,
resolvante_produit_sym, etc) and they seem to work OK.
Maybe it is only permut that isn't working correctly.
Incidentally it looks like permut wants a list as an
argument instead of an integer.
Sorry that I can't be more helpful,
Robert Dodier
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