On 2/20/10, Dieter Kaiser <drdieterkaiser at web.de> wrote:
> I have got no problems with the testsuite and the share_testsuite.
OK by me to commit these new changes.
> By the way: All the code to evaluate, simplify, and resimplify the
> summand of a sum seems to be quite tricky. Perhaps some more
> improvements are possible.
Agreed 100%. The current version of the $sum/%sum code was
written by me some years ago. I wasn't so experienced with Maxima
at the time. I implemented the scheme to make the summation
index a local variable; probably that was a mistake, at this point
I would say it's better to let sum evaluate its arguments just like
integrate. I did fix some bugs.
I think it is reasonable at this time to review the status of the
summation code. Aside from fixing bugs and making the code
faster, I think we should consider making $sum an ordinary
argument-evaluating function, and do away with the peculiar
evaluation scheme which is now in place.
FWIW
Robert Dodier