Not sure I understand what you mean by "the asymmetry of how a subscripted
function argument is passed onwards to subfunctions". Can you give an
example of the problem?
Are you talking about *undefined* subscripted functions, or *defined
*subscripted
functions. If you define
f[i](x):=x^i
that is just a shorthand way of defining a family of functions:
f[i] := subst(i,'i,lambda([x],x^i))
That is, there is no function f[i](x) per se.
-s
On Wed, Oct 30, 2013 at 10:04 PM, MGJT <valhifi at gmail.com> wrote:
> Thank you for replying. It has only been a couple of weeks since I started
> learning maxima and lisp, and as some of you probably know, it is a
> rollercoaster ride, especially after years of getting by on matlab/octave
> and C++.
>
> The thing that threw me off balance was the asymmetry of how a subscripted
> function argument is passed onwards to subfunctions. I was able to work
> around the issue; for validation of a subscripted function foo, I do
>
> namesake: arrayapply (foo, [idx])$
> is (op (namesake) = lambda)
>
> and for _constructing_ objects, as Stavros points out, I do
>
> arraymake (foo, idx)
>
> Learning maxima from the manual is not far off from learning a language
> with just a dictionary, with awareness of the quoting behavior being akin
> to getting the feel of verb transitivity. However, playing around with
> maxima is particularly easy and attractive, so maybe at some later point I
> will submit some tutorial-like notes for the maling list's consideration.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Manuel
>
>
> On Wed, Oct 30, 2013 at 6:27 PM, Henry Baker <hbaker1 at pipeline.com> wrote:
>
>> One of the shortcomings of the Common Lisp standardization committee was
>> that many Common Lisp operations were defined as _macros_ or _special
>> forms_ rather than functions.
>>
>> There was nothing wrong with defining macros and special forms, but these
>> particular definitions should have been expanded into calls upon
>> _standardized_ Common Lisp functions.
>>
>> There is no reason why Maxima has to make the same mistake.
>>
>> Any Maxima function which "for convenience" quotes its argument(s) should
>> expand into a _documented Maxima function_ which _doesn't_ quote its
>> argument(s).
>>
>> At 02:53 PM 10/30/2013, Stavros Macrakis wrote:
>> >arrayinfo is one of those annoying functions which, "for the user's
>> convenience", quotes its argument.
>>
>>
>>
>