ibase and obase



On 6/18/06, van Nek <van.nek at arcor.de> wrote:

> (%i6) 6F;Incorrect syntax: F is not an infix operator
> 6F;
>  ^
> (%i6) 6E;
> Incomplete number.  Missing exponent?

> This tells me that 6F and 6E should work, or do I misunderstand the
> documentation?

It should work. The observed behavior is a bug.

Maxima's parser calls common-lisp:read-from-string to convert strings
like "1234" into integers. read-from-string is happy enough with
stuff like 6e but the Maxima parser barfs before it gets to read-from-string.

A solution is to make the Maxima parser happy with 6e, etc.
I don't think any revision of stuff downstream of that is needed.
Probably there would need to be some special notation to help
the parser distinguish integers from floats and symbols.
I can't think of anything at the moment.

Robert Dodier