On 4/2/07, Stavros Macrakis <macrakis at alum.mit.edu> wrote:
> Perhaps I wasn't clear. I was talking about the "basic meaning" of
> Maxima's current solve command, not about some abstact notion of
> solving in general. Then I gave some examples to motivate why the
> current behavior might be sensible.
OK, no problem.
> It may be possible to make this work. But what do you do about
>
> solve(x*p=x,x)
>
> Currently, Maxima returns x=0, the only solution true for all p. But
> if you interpret parameters so that there only have to be solutions
> for *some* values, then the correct answer is ALL, because for p=1, it
> is true for all x.
Interesting example. I wouldn't mind seeing something like
solve(x*p = x, x) => if p=1 then {x s.t. x in C} else {x = 0}.
There are various bits of that which aren't possible yet.
The {x s.t. p(x)} notation is probably the easy part.
Getting solve to investigate different alternatives is
probably very difficult in general.
FWIW
Robert