Raymond Toy <toy.raymond at gmail.com> writes:
> Rupert> Yeah, but my question is why we clobber *READ-BASE* when
> Rupert> loading lisp files. I genuinely can't think of any situation
> Rupert> where I would want to do that... Frankly, I'm struggling to
> Rupert> think of a situation where I'd want it when load()ing .mac
> Rupert> files either.
>
> Because the numerical constants are easier to interpret when written
> in a certain base? Like 0x3fffffff is (sometimes) easier to interpret
> than 1073741823.
>
> Ray
I think I wasn't clear. In Lisp, you can get that behaviour by #16r or
#x. In Maxima, admittedly I don't think you can do that sort of
trick. However, at the moment, the meaning of the code you write is
changed by the value of ibase when your code is loaded. What I intended
to ask was whether there was any situation where I wanted:
ibase: 10;
load(foo);
and
ibase: 16;
load(foo);
To have different effects.
Rupert
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