t/nil in Maxima, was: Functions may leak information about names(!) of localvariables.



On 12/29/06, Andrej Vodopivec <andrej.vodopivec at gmail.com> wrote:

> I don't think t is a synonym for true in maxima. This was a bug in
> wxmaxima (it is fixed in the latest release).

The Maxima parser parses t to $T and nil to $NIL.
So those are not synonyms of true and false.
On the other hand, ?t and ?nil parse to T and NIL, so those are indeed
synonyms of true and false.
That is consistent with the general treatment of ?foo symbols,
so I believe that is exactly what we want.

best
Robert Dodier