A regression in Maxima 5.17.1 with limits and assumptions?

>>>>> "Michael" == Michael Abshoff <michael.abshoff at googlemail.com> writes:

    >> I think PARTITION splits EXP into parts, the first which is
    >> independent of VAR.  So I don't know why we need to compute the sign
    >> of that.

    Michael> Ok, so is this something that you would consider worth fixing?

Yes,  but I need to think a little more about this.  BEHAVIOR needs to
return -1, 0, or 1, so it might have to check the sign.

We'd also have to look at why 5.16.3 doesn't call BEHAVIOR, but 5.17
does.

    Michael> (%i2) forget();
    Michael> (%o2)                                 []
    Michael> (%i3) limit(a*sin(x)/x, x,0);
    Michael> Is  a  positive, negative, or zero?
    Michael> zero;
    Michael> (%o3)                                  a
    Michael> Since I just told Maxima that a equals zero shouldn't
    >> it take that into     Michael> consideration?
    >> Maxima doesn't normally remember your responses to these questions.
    >> (I kind of like it this way.  It makes exploration easier.)

    Michael> Fair enough.

I think the hgfred routine behaves like you want, but I find that
annoying.

    Michael> And also:
    Michael> (%i4) forget();
    Michael> (%o4)                                 []
    Michael> (%i5) limit(a*sin(x)/x, x,0);
    Michael> Is  a  positive, negative, or zero?
    Michael> Now press CTRL-D and the question is repeated
    >> infinitely:
    Michael> (%i5) limit(a*sin(x)/x, x,0);
    Michael> Is  a  positive, negative, or zero?
    >> That appears to be an issue with Clisp.  In CMUCL, it just prints out
    >> the prompt again.  Gcl does something similar.
    >> My guess is that Ctrl-D in clisp closes the stream that we're reading
    >> from and maxima doesn't notice that the stream has been closed and
    >> keeps asking.  If so, maxima should do something better than that.

    Michael> Ok. I hit CTRL-D by accident in that situation and was surprised about
    Michael> the seemingly endless loop. It doesn't seem like a high priority issue
    Michael> from my POV.

I agree.  But maxima ought to be consistent when reasonably possible.

Ray