Re: [fricas-devel] Re: InputForm

Ralf Hemmecke <[email protected]> writes:

> I don't yet know what unparse does, but do you think that
>
>    lin z == unparse(z::InputForm)::Symbol::OutputForm
>
> should do the job also for other expressions than polynomials?

well...

(5) -> sum(1/i, i=1..n)::INFORM

   (5)  (%defsum (/ 1 %G) %G i 1 n)
                                                              Type: InputForm

One idea we had is that InputForm preserves the semantics *exactly*, and
another function possibly pretends that we'd be using the interpreter,
and thus assumes the interpreter's environment.

At least I for one am strongly in favour of that idea, and even with
this in mind, (5) above is a bug.

(11) -> unparse(integrate(%e^(x^2), x)::INFORM)

   (11)  "integral(exp(x^2),x::Symbol)"
                                                                 Type: String

is another example.  Note that integral *is* a function, so the result
of INFORM is quite OK...

In summary, it really depends on what you want to do.

Martin