hi-
I have an issue with the behavior/implementation of $resultant in 5.9.2.
put simply, $resultant is tossing the (coefficient) denominators of
it arguments,
and as such, does not return their resultant. for example:
f:(x-a1)*(x-a2);
g:(x-b1)*(x-b2);
resultant(3*f, g, x) => 9 (a1 - b1) (a2 - b1) (a1 - b2) (a2 - b2)
resultant(f/3, g, x) => (a1 - b1) (a2 - b1) (a1 - b2) (a2 - b2)
before passing the computation to procedure designated by the variable
$resultant, the function $resultant is clobbering its arguments with
the cadr's
of their respective ratrep*'s. thus 3 survives but 1/3 does not.
clearly, having everybody integral is preferable for the actual
computation,
but I think the appropriate powers of the denominators should be
multiplied back
into the answer.
-John
[p.s. it seems that gmane's blog-style-post-a-message automated
interface has the
<a href="http://gmane.org/list-address.php?
group=gmane.comp.mathematics.maxima.general">
wrong address</a> for the mailing list.]