Subject: [Newbie] problem with conditional expression
From: Richard Fateman
Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2007 09:09:27 -0700
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Robert Dodier [mailto:robert.dodier at gmail.com]
> Sent: Thursday, March 22, 2007 9:03 AM
> To: fateman at cs.berkeley.edu
> Cc: Stavros Macrakis; maxima at math.utexas.edu
> Subject: Re: [Maxima] [Newbie] problem with conditional expression
>
> On 3/21/07, Richard Fateman <fateman at cs.berkeley.edu> wrote:
>
> > There is a major difference between program control flow and
> > expression evaluation.
>
> I've proposed a naive implementation of partially-evaluated
> conditionals. I don't doubt that bright people have come up with
> better systems.
Not necessarily.
> However, those people don't seem to be on our
> mailing list.
Not a great reason to change an existing system. You can easily introduce
your ideas by adding features like pif( ) for partially-evaluated "if"
and see where it goes.
>
> The naive proposal should be compared more to the existing
> implementation, which is not just naive, but painful and obnoxious
> besides, than to systems with no implementation in sight.
The existing implementation is, I suspect, painful because the alternatives
were worse...
See what was done in Mathematica and Maple.
RJF