another question about maxima and lisp



Hello,
  I am just learning lisp, so I have some (possibly very naive)
  questions about how maxima interacts with various lisps. It
  seems that there are standard macro defintions somewhere, but I don't
  know where they are.

So, here is something very simple I would like to understand.

In maxima, one can get the following lines

(%i5) f(x):= x^2;
                                            2
(%o5)                             f(x) := x
(%i6) ?print(%);

((MDEFINE SIMP) (($F) $X) ((MEXPT) $X 2))

So, the function (latex notation) $f(x) = x^2$ has the (I suppose)
maxima lisp representation as

((MDEFINE SIMP) (($F) $X) ((MEXPT) $X 2))

In gcl, one would define this function as

(defun f (x) (expt x 2))

Of course there is a similarity, but these are *not* the same.

Where are the definitions of
   MDEFINE, MPLUS, MEXPT etc. in the maxima package.

Or, are they somewhere else?

Also, what does the
  SIMP 
symbol mean?

TIA,
  -sen


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