Re: [Maxima-discuss] How can I call Maxima functions from a language different from Common Lisp? (FFI or server/client, doesn't matter)

[Leo B. <l_b...@us...>]

Richard Fateman <fa...@be...> writes:

> On 8/31/2016 10:20 AM, Leo Butler wrote:
>>> Yes, it would be nice, if Maxima would have the possibility to
>>> >communicate in a more computer parseable way.
>> The alt-display package is what you want, I think.
>> See the examples in the info documentation.
> The alt-display package does something useful, but is it really what
> is needed?

As I wrote, it satisfies his *wants*.

> If Maxima is being used to produce actual symbolic expressions rather
> than (say) numbers,
> then the recipient R of such information is faced with expressions
> like  A+B.
> Which means that R probably needs to know how to parse pretty-much arbitrary
> "algebraic" notation expressions, following the rules of Maxima syntax.
>
> The expressions inside Maxima are already "parsed" into an
> "intermediate language"
> that explicitly represents the symbolic data.  This language is
> trivially printed and
> read back in as strings, or could be passed as pointers to trees.
>
> Thus A+B*C   internally is  [*see note]   (+  A (* B C))
> and  (A+B)*C                  is                      (* (+ A B) C))
>
> note:  it is an easy transformation to get to the forms above, but
> actually for various
> reasons Maxima uses something more elaborate.
>
> ((mplus simp) $a ((mtimes simp) $b $c))    is the first one, for example.
>
> This is a stumbling block for programs calling CAS over a socket ...
> if they are accessing anything "symbolic" they either have to duplicate
> the parsing mechanism already in Lisp/Maxima
> to obtain information from strings,  or find another
> way of passing more sophisticated data in streams.    Or perhaps they
> are linking to a CAS for some trivial response, like the one from nroots()
> guaranteed to be an integer.

I agree with what you have written. But curiously no frontend to Maxima
takes this approach, as far as I am aware.

-- 
Leo Butler                <l_b...@us...>
SDF Public Access UNIX System -   http://sdf.lonestar.org