Raymond you wrote,
"If this bug prevents you from using maxima, I suspect you will not be
satisfied with any program because they all have bugs. Perhaps you
won't find them, but what if you do?"
I understand this. It is just the more trivial a mistake is the more
difficult it is to put any faith in a program. This is the idea that
"if they can't get the simple stuff right, how are they supposed to be
able to do the complex." I have made plenty of bugs when I program so I
understand a bug free life does not exist. I really like using Maxima
and will continue to do so as support in this mailing group is really
quite good, and Maxima is such a useful easy program to use.
I mainly asked about the CLISP error to get an idea from programmers how
usual these errors are. From Sen's and your response I see they are
quite usual. I am personally trying to find useful applications of CAS
to what historically has been numerical problems of the 1960s i.e.
FORTRAN code for solving quantum few body scattering problems using NAG
and other software. That is trying to replace a little bit of the
number crunching with some intelligent code. It is just discouraging to
see something like sin(7.25pi)=0 and realize how far it could be for
practical use.
best
Yigal