Not only do the two user-interfaces differ in grammar and semantics regarding
some operators and functions (see chapter 4 for an overview):
In Maxima-mode, symbolic variables need not be declared as such
by syms
. Jasymca automatically creates symbolic variables for
each unknown character sequence. Return values are automatically
assigned to variables named d1,d2,d3,..
, and remain accessible
throughout the session. These two features make Maxima-mode
favourable for work with symbolic expressions, since few variables
need to be declared. It is less suitable for large amounts of data
since each intermediate result is saved, and fills up memory.
Some random examples follow. Commands in Maxima-mode must be concluded with a semicolon and may extend beyond several lines, i.e. hitting ``return'' without the semicolon leaves Jasymca waiting for more input.
c1) [2,3,4]+[4,5,6]; % semicolon! d1 = [ 6 8 10 ] % automatic variable d1 (c2) d1[2]*d1[3]; % index in brackets d2 = 80 (c3) x^2+3 = y*x-2; % automatic symbolic vars d3 = -x*y+(x^2+5) % equations are differences (c4) choose(n,k):=n!/((n-k)!*k!); % defining functions choose (c5) sum(1/k^2,k,1,1000);% 2. version of sum d4 = 1.6439 (c6) allroots( (x-1)^3*(x-2)^2*(x-3)*(x-4) ); d5 = [ 4 3 2 2 1 1 1 ] (c7) allroots(x^2+1); d6 = [ 1*i -1*i ] c8) a:x+2-y; % assignment with ':' a = -y+(x+2)
Working with m-files is not supported, therefor all functions loaded by this mechanism do not work in Maxima-mode. Working with vectors and matrices is also less comfortable: While the builtin functions (determinante, inverse, LAPACK-functions, etc) are available, the conveniant methods for indexing, extraction and insertion ( colon operator) are not supported.
Working with files is accomplished using the loadfile
und save
-
functions, or the menu-fileoptions.