On 3/15/08, Stavros Macrakis <macrakis at alum.mit.edu> wrote:
> exp(x)-%e^x => 0
> log(exp(x)) => x
> exp(x+y)/exp(x) => exp(y)
> factor(exp(2*x)-1)
> integrate
> radcan
> limit
> etc. etc.
Whatever simplifications are already implemented for %e^x,
can also be applied to exp(x), with sufficient programming effort.
("Sufficient" in this case is much less than, say, the effort needed
to repair or rewrite the definite integration code.)
I am interested in finding a representation for the exponential
function which is consistent with the representation of other
mathematical functions. It is an interesting and useful theorem
that exp(x) = %e^x but, I claim, that need not and should not
be the basis of its representation in Maxima.
> I suppose you could uniformly represent a^b as exp(b*log(a)) but then
> you'd have to change everything in Maxima that handled "^" to handle
> exp instead. Do you really want to represent x^2 as exp(2*log(x))?
No.
best
Robert