Jamie,
thank you very much for the explanation.
I'll study what you wrote carefully.
Pier
On Fri, 03 Feb 2012 17:14:44 +0000, Jaime Villate wrote
> On 02/03/2012 03:55 PM, Jaime Villate wrote:
> > You could have created a list rather than an array by simply writing
> > the "for" command
> > right away:
> > for i:0 thru 9 do (Y[i](x) := i*x, display (Y[i]));
> >
> > After you have defined those 10 functions,...
>
> Let me correct myself. The above command did not just define 10 functions
> 0, x, 2*x, ..., 9*x, but it really defined a function of two
> variables, Y[y](x) ---> y*x Thus, the above command would be
> equivalent to: for i:0 thru 9 do (Y[y](x) := y*x, display (Y[i]));
>
> which shows that the function Y[y](x) is being superfluously defined
> 10 times and an even simpler form of the above command would be:
> Y[y](x) := y*x; for i:0 thru 9 do display (Y[i]);
>
> If one really wants to define just an array of 10 functions, one
> should use define() instead of := for i:0 thru 9 do (define
> (Y[i](x), i*x), display(Y[i](x)));
>
> This is one more good reason to advise users not to use "Maxima
> functions" to
> represent the kind of functions they are used to in mathematics.
>
> Cheers,
> Jaime
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