Scope, assumptions, asksign, context. Was Re: Bug in Maxima 5.30.0



On 2013-09-05, Stavros Macrakis <macrakis at alum.mit.edu> wrote:

> Hmm, I guess I didn't make it clear what my point was with the with_posval
> example.  It is certainly possible to write with_posval in Lisp without
> danger of variable collisions, and using supcontext and unwind-protect for
> contexts.  It's probably even possible to write it in Maxima with some
> acrobatics around variable naming. (And I don't consider writing it as a
> macro to be a reasonable solution.)

Why is a macro unreasonable? That seems rather natural, and not just to
work around variable scope or assumption scope problems ....

> However, I would claim that our current primitives make it difficult to
> write it in Maxima in a clear, simple way.

I will have a go at it. Watch this space.

best

Robert Dodier