On 2/11/08, Gabriel Dos Reis wrote: > On Mon, 11 Feb 2008, Bill Page wrote: > | > | As I said before, allowing arbitrary strings of symbols to be a member > | of Symbol could be very similar to how subscripts are represented. > | > | (5) -> script(alpha,[[i,j],[k,l,m],[a],[b,c]])::OUTFORM::SEX > | > | (5) (*02312alpha i j k l m a b c) > | Type: SExpression > > > Am I the only one to be bothered by this purely syntactic encoding > of something that could have semantics content? >
If you are referring to the name-mangling to encode subscript information, then no, you are not the only one. Actually, I think it is rather shocking to see such a hack here! Surely there is a better way. It would be interesting to see what breaks if one attempted to replace the internal representation of the Symbol domain with something more "axiomatic". > I've always been annoyed that the parser would decide to encore > subscript, before semantics processing starts. > It is not clear to me what part the parser plays in this, nor how this might differ between the Axiom interpreter and Spad. Perhaps you can explain? But it seems obvious that the interface to the Symbol domain is intended to serve rather general purposes. Consider for example the definition: elt(sy,lx) == subscript(sy,lx) which seems to imply that writing A[i,j] should result in a call to subscript$Symbol. Writing: (1) -> )set mes bot on (1) -> A[i,j] in the interpreter confirms this. So I think one might claim that the decision to treat 'A[i,j]' as a subscripted symbol is in fact a semantic one. No? Regards, Bill Page. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2008. http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse0120000070mrt/direct/01/ _______________________________________________ open-axiom-devel mailing list open-axiom-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/open-axiom-devel
