Bug 4689 & deprecating limroot

To fix bug 4689<https://sourceforge.net/p/maxima/bugs/4689/>, I revised the cryptically named function colexpt. The revised code no longer requires the function limroot. Since limroot is not called by any other function and does not appear to be generally useful, I propose to deprecating it. Accordingly, I propose replacing

(defun limroot (exp power)
  (cond ((or (atom exp) (not (member (caar exp) '(mtimes mexpt) :test #'eq)))
     
  (limroot (list '(mexpt) exp 1) power)) ;This is strange-JIM.
      ((mexptp exp)  (m^ (cadr exp)
                     (sratsimp (m* (caddr exp) (m^ power -1.)))))
      (t (m*l (mapcar #'(lambda (x)
                      (limroot x power))
                  (cdr exp))))))

 with

(defun limroot (&rest args)
  "limroot is deprecated and no longer available."
  (declare (ignore args))
  (merror "limroot is deprecated and no longer available."))

If anyone has an emotional attachment to limroot, speak now or forever hold your peace. There is always the possibility that someone has 1970s-era code on a floppy disk in a sock drawer that still calls it.
More seriously: Maxima does not have a uniform mechanism for deprecating functions. If anyone has suggestions for a better approach, I’m happy to hear them.

--Barton

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