how to pass the name of a variable as argument?

thanks!

I played a bit around with it (the debug mode), and actually it appears
not to slow down the computations.
On the other hand, if no provisions are taken,
then it's very hard to get something meaningful
just by inspecting values.

Nevertheless, this should be useful.

Oliver

On Thu, May 01, 2008 at 11:47:52PM -0600, Robert Dodier wrote:
> On 5/1/08, Oliver Kullmann <O.Kullmann at swansea.ac.uk> wrote:
> 
> >  Now the problem is that apparently it is
> >  not possible to just stop Maxima in a computation
> >  and to inspect the values of local variables of
> >  a function.
> 
> You might try invoking the Lisp debugger. Launch Maxima with
> the -g command line option. Then you can interrupt a computation
> with control-C, which opens the Lisp debugger.
> 
> Within the Lisp debugger, you can inspect variables, although
> they appear as Lisp variables, with $ prefixed on the name.
> Just entering $foo to inspect the Maxima variable foo displays
> it as a Lisp expression. (displa $foo) (note the irregular spelling)
> displays foo as a Maxima expression.
> 
> Whether or not you can continue the computation seems to
> depend on the Lisp variety. In the CMUCL debugger you can
> enter "go" to continue.
> 
> There might be a way to start the Maxima debugger from
> within the Lisp debugger, but I don't know how to do that.
> 
> Hope this helps
> 
> Robert Dodier