RFC: extracting coefficients of a multivariate polynomial



On Fri, Apr 25, 2008 at 10:23 AM, andre maute <andre.maute at gmx.de> wrote:

> I knew I did need a list, I knew I did need an insert function to lists....
> But in C++, appending to list is an O(1) operation,
> There should really be a kind of warning in the documentation.
>

*Destructively* appending to a list in *some* C++ libraries is an O(1)
operation.  Since Maxima list operations are non-destructive (append(a,b)
does not modify a or b), the typical C++ libraries are not relevant.  Now,
if you're thinking in terms of trees-of-trees or something....

As a general rule, you can assume that Maxima list functions pretty much
follow Lisp semantics and implementation, namely singly-linked lists.
What's more, Maxima has very few destructive list operations (only
list[n]:val as far as I can recall).

           -s