#4152 wxmaxima, bigfloat input

[Richard Fateman]

I think wxmaxima does not understand the input syntax for bigfloats. set fpprec:50
1.00000000000000001b0-1;
returns 0.0, a lisp float.
xmaxima returns 0.0b0, a bigfloat.
even simpler, 1.0b0;
returns 1.0 in wxmaxima. but only if fpprec is large.
rjf

[Gunter Königsmann]

that is weird: all that wxMaxima does is to forward your input to Maxima and to display the results Maxima sends back.
wxMaxima actually has a Maxima parser. but that parser is only used for syntax highlighting, finding out where a command ends.

[Gunter Königsmann]

on my own computer with the current wxMaxima version I seem to get a bigfloat,too. there therefore seems to be something different between our computers.

[Wolfgang Dautermann]

In wxMaxima "Numeric" menu one can set Maxima's numer variable. If that is set to true - either by setting Maxima's variable (maybe in maxima-init.macor using the wxMaxima menu - maybe it it set differently on your computers - the output is 1.0, e.g.

 numer:true ; 1.0b0;
 1.0

wxMaxima 19.07 (Ubuntu 20.04) explicitly wrote what happens with the "Toggle numeric output" menu:

 if numer#false then numer:false else numer:true;

Maybe that option is set differently (and maybe a different setting is saved in the wxMaxima configuration file, so it is set different at wxMaxima startup?). [Remark: The display of the checkbox (next to "Numeric output" does not seem to work in the current wxMaxima development version, it is always shown unchecked].