Wiki article about maxima's treatment of arrays and functions?
Subject: Wiki article about maxima's treatment of arrays and functions?
From: Michel Van den Bergh
Date: Sun, 14 Jan 2007 10:15:44 +0100
Hi,
I was thinking of writing a wiki article on maxima's treatment of arrays
and functions as this is
conceptually very different from other languages (except Common Lisp). I
wonder however if this would
duplicate explanations already available elsewhere.
I originally confused the (in my opinion) strange behaviour of maxima
with regard to arrays
and functions with the lexical versus dynamic binding issue. Thanks to
Richard's explanations I now see
these two issues are distinct.
Since it took me a long time to understand this I assume it must be the
same for other people new to maxima.
I still think the decision not to store functions and arrays in the
value cell was bad, but since that's the way
it is now, it should at least be explained clearly.
Michel