Re: Python vs Lisp: was RE: how to pass the name of a variable as argument?

On 5/18/08, ahmet alper parker <aaparker <at> gmail.com> wrote:

> If this is so stupid, I am sorry :) I see matlab working with mapple on
> symbolic computation issues. Why not make it same for octave and maxima? Can
> we use octave as the language? (Or how they do it in matlab?).

Well, I don't see much value in replacing the Maxima user
language with Matlab syntax. I guess it is a little more well-known
but it's an ad-hoc language just like Maxima's.

However one feature of Matlab that I find very useful is the
submatrix-indexing stuff, e.g. a[i, :] yields all elements in a row
and a[:, j] yields all elements in a column, x[L] yields selected
elements where L is a list of zeros and ones. I think there are
maybe one or two other such constructs. I attempted to replicate
that in Maxima, with some success, in the amatrix add-on package
which I committed to maxima/share/contrib, but replacing the lone
colon with the symbol 'all, and the 0/1 selection by false/true.

FWIW

Robert