On 5/15/12 9:35 PM, kcrisman wrote:
On Tuesday, May 15, 2012 10:27:17 PM UTC-4, Jason Grout wrote:
On 5/15/12 9:17 PM, Keshav Kini wrote:
> plot(x^2, (0, 1))
I definitely think that should give a deprecation warning (I think I've
been advocating for that to give a deprecation warning for a long
time).
For example, I think this is confusing:
plot(x^2+y-x^2,(0,1))
Yes yes, we've had this conversation before. Then maybe we shouldn't
simplify such things automatically, in which case a warning would
actually make sense - who actually types in "x^2+y-x^2" to plot it in
one variable? Like Keshav said, this answers its own question - I can't
remember ever having had an actual support request on this issue. On the
most basic commands, requiring extra syntactical sugar is a recipe for
stultification, and plot is surely one of those commands. I really don't
think we need to get that language legalistic on things like this.
The point is that I can't tell if a function f is actually a function of
one variable because simplification is Hard. The example above is
contrived, but illustrates the point that we may have no idea what is
being plotted. Explicit is better than implicit, etc.
You're right that we've had I don't know how many emails and threads
over this issue. I guess I still haven't changed my mind. One big
thing for making the syntax above illegal is that right now there is a
very ugly wart in the code special-casing that case, and it is
inconsistent with how other things work (for example, note the confusion
on this thread).
Anyway, I'm not going to do anything about it in the near future, so
I'll note my wish that the above had a deprecation warning and go back
to grading.
Thanks,
Jason
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