Subject: dynamically created symbol -- Good Thing To Do?
From: Robert Dodier
Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2012 06:11:06 +0000 (UTC)
Well, I don't remember what I might have said about this before, but anyway ...
> On Thu, Jun 28, 2012 at 10:24 AM, Bill Wood <william.wood3 at comcast.net>wrote:
>> Is the ability to create named variables at run time one of the
>> facilities that make maxima scripting really shine, or is it a
>> dubious practice here as well?
Well, Maxima associates properties (in a general sense, I mean the
assume database, declarations, anything like that) with symbols, and the
scope of those associations is global. So there is really no way to
guarantee that you are working with a symbol which has no other
properties than the ones you give it, except by creating the symbol
yourself (via gensym).
best
Robert Dodier