On 2013-09-30, Wilhelm Haager <wilhelm.haager at htlstp.ac.at> wrote:
> I think, a new bug has been introduced in Maxima 5.31.1-1:
> realroots hangs when trying to calculate the real roots
> even of a simple polynomial:
>
> (%i1) p:x^3+2*x^2-2*x-1;
> (%o1) x^3+2*x^2-2*x-1
> (%i2) realroots(p); .... HANGUP!
The problem is that recent versions of GCL parse 1e-6 and 1e-7
incorrectly in compiled code. I've reported it to the GCL project.
In the meantime I've replaced those literals by (float <rational>)
(there are only a couple of them).
A user can set rootsepsilon:1e-7 to get the expected behavior.
Of course one may wonder if there are other problematic literals ...
I didn't find any but I didn't look very hard either.
best
Robert Dodier