A86: Symbolic program


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A86: Symbolic program




I am just wondering about how others feel about the implementation of a
symbolics program.  I've been doing some pre-planning and thinking and
experimenting, and all, and I have found that, imho, this would be the
best way:

>From the command prompt, the user types in a command like:
::x^2+2*x::
Note that the symbolic is surrounded by 2 colons on each side.  I did
this because (a) it is easily accessible by keyboard, (b) it woudn't
ever be used by anyone in their right mind from the command prompt
(someone confirm this), and (c) it should be pretty easy to intercept
with sqrtPARSE.

This is what I have in mind.  The user types in the symbolic.  sqrtPARSE
intercepts it and evaluates it (I think that the best way would be to
turn it into postfix notation, as it is fast and easy to work with, at
least, that's what the hp48 does and it seems to do a pretty good job of
it).  Anyway, I am not sure about how to represent this in Ans or
anything, so that the user can do something like sDer(Ans) or
sExpand(Ans).  Any ideas would help.  What needs to happen is the
postfix needs to be stored somehow, and then when it is displayed (if
there is any way to intercept the display it would be good) it is
converted back to algebraic.

--
Stephen Hicks
mailto:shicks@mindspring.com
ICQ:5453914
IRC/AIM:Kupopo
Hopemage:http://www.mindspring.com/~shicks/



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