Robert Bradshaw wrote: > Sage lists are Python lists, which are very different than > Mathematica lists.
You say that as if it's a fact of geography which can't be changed. > to change all lists would be a massive (backwards- > incompatible) change, as well as another step away from Python. Not exactly. At present something like 1 + [2, 3, 4, 5] causes Python to cough up an error, right? So extending arithmetic operators to lists wouldn't change the behavior of any existing Python program. (I'm not worried that someone might have written a program which requires an error to be triggered when number + list is encountered.) You could even pitch it in algebraic terms. The set of lists comprises an ideal in the ring of ... well, of something. Maybe the ring of all numbers and lists. Anyway maybe that would appeal to someone with an algebraic state of mind. > Of course, we support all of this without numpy as well. > > sage: a0 = vector([1,2,3,4]) That's not enough. Only vector + vector, scalar * vector, and inner product are defined, right? I'm pretty sure users would like to see vector * vector, vector ^ exponent, scalar / vector, etc. With all that said, Mathematica is more than a little confused about lists --- there is no distinction between lists and sets, and a matrix is just a list of lists. That's a mess, which Sage shouldn't duplicate. But arithmetic on lists isn't confusing. FWIW Robert Dodier --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send email to sage-support@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sage-support-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-support URLs: http://www.sagemath.org -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
