The e indicator is the normal syntax for floating-point numbers.
's' indicates single-precision floating-point and 'd' indicates
double-precision floating-point. I believe all Maxima implementations
represent *all* machine floating-point numbers as double-precision, so all
three are equivalent.
'b' is Maxima syntax for arbitrary-precision floating point numbers, called
'bigfloats' or 'bfloats'. The variable fpprec determines how many decimal
digits are carried along. Thus:
1/3b0, fpprec=20;
=> 3.3333333333333333333b-1
1/3b0, fpprec=30;
=> 3.33333333333333333333333333333b-1
I'll let others address your plotting questions.
-s
On Wed, Oct 21, 2009 at 4:19 PM, John Ogilvie <ogilvie at cecm.sfu.ca> wrote:
> 1 I have discovered that
> 2.3b5 2.3d5 2.3e5 2.3s5
> 2.3B5 2.3D5 2.3E5 2.3S5
> all evaluate to 230000, and I have discovered many, many other
> descriptions in the Maxima help file, but I can find no explanation
> of these operators b,d,e,s,B,D,E,S. Why is there no entry under these
> single letters in the Help index? Where is there an explanation of
> them?
> 2 Why does 'implicit_plot' not accept style specifications as for
> plot2D?
> 3 Is it possible, other than manually, to constrain the axes of a
> plot so that a circle resembles a circle, not an ellipse?
> Your assistance please.
> J. F. Ogilvie
>
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