On 9/12/08, John Lapeyre <pdl at johnlapeyre.com> wrote:
> Here are some Mathematica-language functions
> translated into Maxima
>
> http://www.johnlapeyre.com/mmacompat/index.html
John, thanks for looking into this. If there is some function which
does something for which Maixma has no built-in equivalent,
then it makes sense to implement it. However, creating aliases for
existing functions seems very inadvisable. In some cases maybe
an existing function could be extended with a new feature.
In particular, Fold, FoldList, Nest, NestList, IntegerDigits,
and FromDigits seem to offer features which aren't provided
by Maxima at present. So it makes sense to implement those
in some way (not necessarily an exact translation of the
Mma functions).
Sinc is a widely useful function, but unfortunately creating a new
mathematical function in Maxima is a bit of work. Still, we should
get started by listing the properties a sinc function should have,
and then figure out how to tell integrate, diff, limit, etc about the
new function.
The existing first function could be extended with a second
argument to get the functionality of Take, I think.
Table is, I guess, somewhat different from makelist and create_list
but I don't see much to be gained by trying to make an exact
translation.
There has already been some work on a range function in Maxima,
dunno how Mma Range compares. I'm inclined to recommend
additional work on the existing stuff instead an incompatible
definition.
Aliases of existing functions (Union, Tr, Eigenvalues, etc) seem
ill-advised.
I think there are some features which could be useful to Maxima,
so we should try to sort them out and plug them into the
appropriate places.
best,
Robert Dodier