A carriage return is treated just like a space. Maxima allows spaces
between tokens such as variable names (e.g. phi), operator names (e.g.
:=), and numbers, but not within tokens. If Maxima ignored spaces
between tokens, it couldn't tell the difference between
for i thru 3 do print(i)
and
forithru3doprint(i)
(calling a function called "forithru3doprint"). I suppose a special
case could be introduced to handle your case (carriage returns between
digits), but special cases like that generally come back to surprise
you later. For example, inadvertently omitting the comma in
[2, 3, 4
5, 6, 7]
would lead to the interpretation [2,3,45,6,7] with only a very subtle
visual cue. Currently, that gives an error message, which is helpful
given the expectations a user might have from that layout.
> >>>I have a number that is 3807 digits long. I want to put this number in
> >>>a batch file. ( windows XP system)
> When working with equations, the parser just goes to the next line until
> it finds a ; but with numbers it argues with the \n end of line
> Would it be possible for the parser to ignore \n when reading in numbers?