The global fact database for %e contains *both* numerval
and equal(%e, 2.718..) facts:
(%i2) properties(%e);
(%o2) [database info,equal(%e, 2.718281828459045),constant,numer]
The equal(%e,2.718281828459045) fact is bogus. I suggest that we
eliminate it (same for %pi, %phi, and %gamma). The new meqp function
looks at the current fact database for equal facts to decide equality.
If it looked at the global fact database as well, it would do
equal(%e,2.718281828459045) --> true (and I don't like that).
Also, numerval allows non-double floats for values, but I don't
know of a user-level function that extracts such data. The
only way I know to get the actual numerval data is to use ?mget:
(%i4) numerval(pie,22/7);
(%o4) [pie]
(%i5) ?mget(pie,'numer);
(%o5) 22/7 /* pie, numer --> 3.142857142857143 */
But we have
(%i12) numerval(pie,'apple)$
(%i13) pie,numer;
(%o13) apple
What do you all think about this?
Barton
PS The other day, I built Maxima for Windows using SBCL 1.0. The
testsuite reports one error for test #57 in rtest_trig (might be a
problem with floating point accuracy). I can only run Maxima from
a mingw terminal. The Windows version of SBCL is marked something
like "pre-release" with some other dire warning.
Barton