string comparisons, was: Maxima 5.21.1 release



On 4/26/10, Stavros Macrakis <macrakis at gmail.com> wrote:

> As for is("x">0) giving an error, that is perfectly correct -- it is
> meaningless to compare a string to a number.

Disagreed on this point -- %i and 0 are incomparable but is(%i > 0)
 => false, not an error. By analogy, seems like is("x" > 0) should
likewise yield false.

> But in fact Maxima's comparison functions (other than = and #) don't even
> work on strings -- probably they should.

Agreed, < <= >= > should be able to compare strings.

best

Robert Dodier