Dieter,
Changing ind to something else like ind1 in itensor is no big deal. Had I
noticed that we're using a system constant name I'd have done it a long time
ago.
In terms of the bigger picture, I agree with those who think that system
constants should really be prefixed consistently, e.g., with %. But, such a
wholesale change may not be practical.
I'll change itensor shortly.
Viktor
-----Original Message-----
From: maxima-bounces at math.utexas.edu [mailto:maxima-bounces at math.utexas.edu]
On Behalf Of Dieter Kaiser
Sent: Friday, January 16, 2009 6:24 PM
To: Raymond Toy
Cc: maxima at math.utexas.edu
Subject: Re: [Maxima] Assignment to $ind in itensor?
Am Freitag, den 16.01.2009, 17:41 -0500 schrieb Raymond Toy:
> Don't know. It's unfortunate that these system constants have nice
> short names but are otherwise not distinguished from any other
> constant or variable. One option (which has been proposed before, I
> think) is to give them more distinguishable names that are less likely
> to collide with user variables.
>
> Dieter> Another possible would be to prevent the assignment only
> Dieter> for %i.
>
> We should at least do that.
>
I think it would be at least nice to prevent the numeric constants from
assignment. This is the complete list of the symbols which are declared
to be SYSCONST.
'($%pi $%i $%e $%phi %i $%gamma ;numeric constants
$inf $minf $und $ind $infinity ;pseudo-constants
t nil) ;logical constants
Meanwhile I had a further look at the code of itensor. I have found the
problem in the file ex_calc.mac in the function extdiff(). This
functions does the assignment to the symbol IND. It is possible to
changes this e. g. using ind1 and not ind. After this change the
testsuite and the share_testsuite works as expected.
Dieter Kaiser
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