> Where is this "little google search box"? In my own mail archives, I
> find messages about quoting on 12/26/07, 11/06/07, 1/19/07, just to
> start.
>
http://maxima.sourceforge.net/maximalist.html
After looking below the "little google search box" I see the second search
method, through gmane, which did return some results.
> Well, there's http://maxima.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Maxima%20FAQ,
> most of the content of which comes from the mailing list.
Right, a better FAQ example is the site you posted for dlakelan in another
post, http://www.math.psu.edu/glasner/Max_doc/faq.html#General1
This seems a little more like what I was thinking. It's just that I try to
do my homework, I try to check available sources for posted answers for my
questions because I understand that it can get pretty annoying answering the
same questions over and over. But if I check the FAQs (both of these listed
here) and cannot understand the docs, then post and still get a "geez, this
question again", I start to wonder if everyone wouldn't benefit from an
entry in the FAQ.
This should be easy to understand if you understand Lisp. In Lisp
> terms, you want to write (find_root '(+ x 3) ...), not (find_root (+ x
> 3) ...). The big difference is that in Maxima, it is *possible* to
> write (+ x 3) which, if x is not defined, evaluates to (+ x 3). A
> cleaner way of doing this would make the bound variable explicit, e.g.
> (find_root (lambda (x) (+ x 3)) ...), but Maxima isn't very clever
> about lambda.
> > Am I to read from this that maxima doesn't use lexical scoping?
>
> Correct.
>
> There have been many discussions
> about changing that, but in a system like Maxima where x is sometimes
> equivalent to 'x, it is not clear what lexical scoping should do in
> some cases....
>
> With true lexical scoping, you don't need obscure names. It's because
> it's using dynamic scoping that you need the obscure-name trick. By
> "generic symbols", I guess you mean "generated symbols" (gensyms)?
> Those are needed for macros, which aren't the issue here.
Indeed I did, generated symbol. And of course you are right, gensyms are
very rarely needed for anything but macros. I was all twisted in my
thinking, but it is true that if I could be certain that some variable name
I wish to use in my function was not used anywhere else, there is no danger
of collisions. It seems that all of this craziness in my head stems from
dynamic scoping. I suppose my conceptual problems have been solved to
within Maxima's limits.
Thank you, Stavros,
Zach