gratuitous incompatibilities? uppercase, sets



I just came across a program file written years ago for Macsyma, and 
tried running
it on Maxima.
First problem: the file assumes that upper and lower case are 
indistinguishable.
  I converted the file to lower case.  (Is there a flag that would make 
this unnecessary??)

Second problem:  it uses intersection to compute the intersection of two 
sets represented as
lists.  Instead of just returning the answer (as a list), it gives an 
error message.
Since it is already checking types, why not have it use the old version 
when the types
are compatible with the old version?  There are lots of places where 
lists are used
and could be thought of as sets, e.g. lists of solutions from solve.

I am still fiddling with it..


RJF