On 02/18/2011 11:45 AM, Raymond Toy wrote:
> How is restart() different from quitting maxima and starting maxima
> again? If there is none, the why spend any time adding this code and
> testing it?
restart is programmatic, whereas quitting and restarting is not. So for
example if you want to derive some results under say varying
assumptions, you might want a single batch file which first makes
assumptions A and then does some derivation and outputs the results, and
then resets the whole system and makes assumptions B and then does the
alternative derivation. As I said, kill(all) and reset() goes a long
way, but it's not as much of a sure thing as re-execing maxima from scratch.
Also I am using maxima normally from within emacs, but sometimes I want
a stand-alone batch file so that for example I can include it in a
makefile and have maxima generate TeX output that is included into a
document.