simp.lisp



On Thu, 24 Jan 2008 14:07:45 -0600
Barton Willis <willisb at unk.edu> wrote:

> One thing that would be useful: As you work through simp.lisp, 
> write tests that try to reach every branch of the main
> functions (addk, timesk, for example...). That would be a valuable 
> contribution, I think. Currently, our (so called) regression
> tests are pretty much hit-or-miss.
> 
> One thing to watch for in simp.lisp: look for bugs similar to 
> 
>  
> http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=1372477&group_id=4933&atid=104933
> 
> They are pretty easy to spot and to fix.
> 
> It's tempting the change Maxima to make it look nicer. But it's
> easy to break stuff that the testsuite doesn't catch. I've done
> that lots of times. And there is code in share and elsewhere
> that the testsuite doesn't even try to check. Be careful.
> 
> Barton
> 

Ah that's a really good idea! I'll try and do that as I go. There are
some problems though.

For example I noticed that (*red1 '((rat) 0 0)) => 0. This isn't
necessarily a problem, but should one write a test for it?

Anyway, about dangerous changes, my immediate aims were to read and
understand the whole file, after which I'd understand a bit better how
everything fitted together.

Rupert