--- Gabriel Dos Reis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> | > But you want it to hold a token of some type. That is a > | > different story. > | > | Surely that isn't a surprising way to want to use a CAS? > > Not really. You did not say you wanted "n" to be a symbol; you want > it to designate some *value*. Yes and no. I want it to be a variable, but a variable of a specific type. So rather than just saying x is "something" I say it is "some integer" or "some float". I thought I was saying that, but apparently not - do I understand correctly that what I thought I was saying in fact cannot be said in Axiom at this time? > There is a difference between a symbol and an Integer. > > What you want, if I understand your manipulation correctly, is to use > symbols, and only later subsitute some values for those symbols. Right. > And you want to make sure that the symbols are interpreted in some > ways. But, you can't say that directly in the Axiom type system. > Because Axiom does not attach advanced types to symbols. Is there a reason it does not, or is just something that hasn't been implemented? > Yes. Notice that in that context "x" is interpreted as *symbol*, not > as a value. Your declaration of "n" said it should be interpreted as > standing for a value, but you did not say which. So what I want then, using your terminology, would be a way to declare a symbol to have a Type. The reason a1 : MachineInteger produces the expectation of a value is that Axiom simply doesn't support a symbol with a Type, and so that assignment carries with it the assumption that a1 now has some specific value? Ouch. There are many cases where one tries to solve a problem to arrive at a symbolic equation, not a value. If Axiom makes this difficult that's going to be a real problem. As long as I'm asking basic questions, just how would I go about defining a function f(x) that took the expression produced by integrating(1/(1+x^4),x) and numerically evaluated it for the given value of x? Cheers, CY __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ Axiom-developer mailing list Axiom-developer@nongnu.org http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/axiom-developer