> I agree that blocking arithmetic on ind/und/etc. completely is one
> solution. The other (less radical) solution is the one which I think
> we're pursuing, namely giving a failsafe calculational result.
> Failsafe means that it will sometimes be more conservative than
> necessary.
I agree. I think maxima should simplify what it can without ambiguity.
(inf + inf = inf, etc)
> Thus, though 1^inf and 0^0 may often be usefully taken as
> 1, since in some situations (perhaps rare ones) that would lead to an
> incorrect result, we must leave them as und and ind.
I don't agree that this is the only possible conclusion. Why not
just leave ambiguous cases like 0^0 alone instead of losing even more
information?
Such cases could still be handled by some fictious function like
infsimp().
Regards,
Harald