reduce-algebra-developers — Discussion of development, administration and support for Reduce

Re: [Reduce-algebra-developers] "read" command?

[Kostas O. <k.o...@at...>]

Thanks Raf and Eberhard, I think that will take care of my immediate
problem.  But the solution is certainly non-trivial!

maxima has this command:





------------------------------------------------------------------------





_Function:_ *read*/(expr_1, …, expr_n)/

    Prints expr_1, …, expr_n, then reads one expression from the console
    and returns the evaluated expression. The expression is terminated
    with a semicolon |;| or dollar sign |$|.

    See also |readonly <cid:par...@at...>|

    Example:

    (%i1) foo: 42$ 
    (%i2) foo: read ("foo is", foo, " -- enter new value.")$
    foo is 42  -- enter new value. 
    (a+b)^3;
    (%i3) foo;
                                         3
    (%o3)                         (b + a)

    Categories:  Console interaction <cid:par...@at...>

------------------------------------------------------------------------

I think a similar command would be generally useful in Reduce.

                            Kostas


On 11/13/2014 15:14, Eberhard Schruefer wrote:
> One possibility would be
>
> symbolic procedure ask_value u;
>     begin scalar p,r;
>       p := setpchar "? ";
>       prin2 u;
>       r := xread nil;
>       return r
>     end;
>
> Then
>
> ask_value 'x;
>
> would yield
>
> x? 199;
>
> 199
>
>     Eberhard
>
> On 13/11/14 04:08, Kostas Oikonomou wrote:
>> Does Reduce have a "read" command that can get input from the user?
>> E.g. so you can say something like
>> read("x? ", x), which will prompt for a value for x by printing "x? " on
>> the terminal.
>>
>>                          Kostas
>>
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Re: [Reduce-algebra-developers] "read" command?

[Eberhard S. <esc...@ca...>]

One possibility would be

symbolic procedure ask_value u;
    begin scalar p,r;
      p := setpchar "? ";
      prin2 u;
      r := xread nil;
      return r
    end;

Then

ask_value 'x;

would yield

x? 199;

199

    Eberhard

On 13/11/14 04:08, Kostas Oikonomou wrote:
> Does Reduce have a "read" command that can get input from the user?
> E.g. so you can say something like
> read("x? ", x), which will prompt for a value for x by printing "x? " on
> the terminal.
>
>                          Kostas
>
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> Get alerted through email, SMS, voice calls or mobile push notifications.
> Take corrective actions from your mobile device.
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Re: [Reduce-algebra-developers] "read" command?

[Raffaele V. <raf...@un...>]

On 13/11/14 04:08, Kostas Oikonomou wrote:
> Does Reduce have a "read" command that can get input from the user?
> E.g. so you can say something like
> read("x? ", x), which will prompt for a value for x by printing "x? " on
> the terminal.

There is an 'xread' command that you may test in this way:

while xread(x) neq stop do write x;

but in order to use it in a program you have to encapsulate into a 
symbolic procedure, or xread would read from the current input stream 
which would just be the rest of your program. The code may be found in 
Appendix C of the book by MacCallum-Wright "Algebraic computing with 
Reduce".

Raf.

>                          Kostas
>
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[Reduce-algebra-developers] "read" command?

[Kostas O. <k.o...@at...>]

Does Reduce have a "read" command that can get input from the user? 
E.g. so you can say something like
read("x? ", x), which will prompt for a value for x by printing "x? " on
the terminal.

                        Kostas

[Reduce-algebra-developers] new package "cuba" for multi-dimensional numerical integration

[Kostas O. <k.o...@at...>]

Using the foreign C interface to Reduce-CSL constructed by Arthur
Norman, I've written a package "cuba" which interfaces Reduce to the
state-of-the-art Cuba library for multi-dimensional numerical
integration. See http://www.feynarts.de/cuba/is.

The package seems to work fine, with the version of Reduce as of
yesterday (the SVN repository is changing fast!).
Presently, it builds only on a Unix (or Unix-like) system. I use
FreeBSD, but I don't think that any Linux variety should present any
problems.

Please let me know if you are interested in trying it out, commenting,
extending, etc.

Thanks to Arthur Norman for a considerable amount of guidance!

                            Kostas

Re: [Reduce-algebra-developers] A new Reduce primer

[Raffaele V. <raf...@un...>]

> These two documents (plus a copy of the Standard Lisp Report) have bene
> put in a new "primers" directory in the hope that others will contribute
> further documents explaining either the use of Reduce or aspects of its
> internal structure. The authors of Inside Reduce would be very happy to
> consider merging in chapters to that contributed by others ifthat felt
> more confortable than having a free standing separate document. I might
> also hope that this message will inspire some people to open up a
> discussion about what extra explanation would be useful. There can then be
> a secondary discussion of what is feasible and who will do the work!
>
> Arthur

I just would like to add that, on my side, the reason for writing the 
document was that I was trying to write a Reduce package, and I could 
not easily find all the information I needed. Writing down the detailed 
answers that Arthur gave to my questions seemed to me to be a good way 
to learn Reduce internals and, at the same time, try to attract 
prospective users to Reduce by improving its accessibility.

As Arthur already said, other people may have different ideas on what 
needs to be uncovered in Reduce; this is why suggestions, discussions 
and/or contributed sections and chapters to "Inside Reduce" are welcome.

Raffaele.

>
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>

Re: [Reduce-algebra-developers] A new Reduce primer

[René G. <dos...@gm...>]

Thanks Arthur and your co-author for the new primer and also for the
reference to the paper in the AMS Notices of November (not yet in my mail
box).

As an addict to CAS's for at least 40 years --- and as a (retired) plasma
theorist in a team of Solar radioastronomy with a first degree in
engineering --- my comment is that it would be rather foolish to trust any
electronic device (full of "gremlins") and its associated software control
or the software running on it (full of "bugs").

However one cannot trust anymore hand or purely mental computations! In the
latter case unless you are Steve Hawking of course.

It would be strange that trustworthy results would be expected in computing
without the multiple checking with different teams, methods and equipment
which applies in all scientific domains. More than one referee is expected
to check the proofs of theorems presented for publication in pure
mathematics.

Now my past experience with the commercial Macsyma was equally negative as
reported in the paper about another commercial CAS. I found however with
maxima and reduce and indeed any other free software of very high quality
--- the quality control is soon made by an army of eager users if the item
is of enough interest! --- all the help one can hope within reason.

Reasonable expectations however apply to both free and commercial software.
A few users simply expect the impossible and more often than not without
doing first their own homework ... they are not just cheating students
either!

Many thanks again to the people who prepared the primers and keep improving
the manual.

René.







On Sun, Nov 2, 2014 at 3:56 AM, Arthur Norman <ac...@ca...> wrote:

> In trunl/doc/primers/insidereduce.pdf you will find a new document by
> Raffaele Vitolo and myself that can stand alongside the existing Herbert
> Melenk primer.pdf as a source of information for people wishing to build
> their own Reduce packages or even just for people who wiah to understand a
> little more about the internals of the system. For instance those who feel
> that it is important to be able to understand all the source code and all
> the algorithms used by software you rely on (see for instance
> www.ams.org/notices/201410/rnoti-p1249.pdf) may or may not find Reduce
> able to solve their particular problem and may or may not uncover bugs in
> it - but they can inspect all the code and if necessary correct or extend
> it. The existing and new primer might help them in their navigation!
>
> These two documents (plus a copy of the Standard Lisp Report) have bene
> put in a new "primers" directory in the hope that others will contribute
> further documents explaining either the use of Reduce or aspects of its
> internal structure. The authors of Inside Reduce would be very happy to
> consider merging in chapters to that contributed by others ifthat felt
> more confortable than having a free standing separate document. I might
> also hope that this message will inspire some people to open up a
> discussion about what extra explanation would be useful. There can then be
> a secondary discussion of what is feasible and who will do the work!
>
> Arthur
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> _______________________________________________
> Reduce-algebra-developers mailing list
> Red...@li...
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/reduce-algebra-developers
>

[Reduce-algebra-developers] A new Reduce primer

[Arthur N. <ac...@ca...>]

In trunl/doc/primers/insidereduce.pdf you will find a new document by 
Raffaele Vitolo and myself that can stand alongside the existing Herbert 
Melenk primer.pdf as a source of information for people wishing to build 
their own Reduce packages or even just for people who wiah to understand a 
little more about the internals of the system. For instance those who feel 
that it is important to be able to understand all the source code and all 
the algorithms used by software you rely on (see for instance 
www.ams.org/notices/201410/rnoti-p1249.pdf) may or may not find Reduce 
able to solve their particular problem and may or may not uncover bugs in 
it - but they can inspect all the code and if necessary correct or extend 
it. The existing and new primer might help them in their navigation!

These two documents (plus a copy of the Standard Lisp Report) have bene 
put in a new "primers" directory in the hope that others will contribute 
further documents explaining either the use of Reduce or aspects of its 
internal structure. The authors of Inside Reduce would be very happy to 
consider merging in chapters to that contributed by others ifthat felt 
more confortable than having a free standing separate document. I might 
also hope that this message will inspire some people to open up a 
discussion about what extra explanation would be useful. There can then be 
a secondary discussion of what is feasible and who will do the work!

Arthur