solve_inconsistent_error is confusing



On 8/5/08, Harald Geyer <harald at lefant.net> wrote:

>  While reviewing maxima-Bugs-2037993 (and the already quite dated
>  maxima-Bugs-1251540) and reading solve.lisp I realized that there
>  is a global flag solve_inconsistent_error which is true by default
>  (and there even existes documentation about it).
>
>  I think solve_inconsistent_error should be false by default because,
>   - this is the behaviour I'd expect from a mathematical POV
>   - the name suggests that it affects solve, but it seems it only
>    affects linsolve but not algsys. - The documentation isn't really
>    clear about this.
>   - As users are used to the behaviour of algsys (returning empty
>    solutions) they are confused if linsolve behaves differently.
>
>  Are there any objections to this?

My recommendation is to kill off solve_inconsistent_error entirely
and change any code it affects to act as though it were false.

If you are interested, please post a patch to do that, and then
if nobody objects, please commit the patch.

best

Robert Dodier