On Nov 2, 12:22 pm, "John Cremona" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 2008/11/2 William Stein <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
<SNIP>
> > OK, let's do that.
>
> How much of the problem would go away if the standard startup file had
> var('a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z')
> in it? So that var() only had to be used explicitly for longer variable
> names?
That would not solve the problem. IMHO even pre-declaring x to be
symbolic is bad since it is inconsistent, but I guess it is a
compromise. Any "decent" language should require that one has to
declare variables. I remember a bunch of bugs in MMA where local
functions assume certain variables and things go wrong when the user
does something unexpected on the "outside". This obviously has also to
do with namespaces and so on, but we are using a modern programming
language and the decision to require symbolic variables to be declared
is the right one from my point of view. The documentation is probably
not as outspoken about this as it should be.
Obviously there are people who disagree and prefer the more lispy
model of Maxima/MMA, but Sage is not a clone of either one of those
systems. Beauty is always in the eye of the beholder :)
> John
>
Cheers,
Michael
> > William
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
To post to this group, send email to [email protected]
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel
URLs: http://www.sagemath.org
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
