Timeline for Is everything in Mathematica ultimately stored as a rule?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
17 events
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| Mar 26, 2015 at 2:15 | vote | accept | George Wolfe | ||
| Mar 4, 2015 at 3:29 | answer | added | djp | timeline score: 8 | |
| Feb 28, 2014 at 19:05 | review | Close votes | |||
| Mar 1, 2014 at 9:32 | |||||
| Oct 22, 2013 at 13:25 | comment | added | Dr. belisarius | @Mr.Wizard At your service :) | |
| Oct 22, 2013 at 11:19 | comment | added | Mr.Wizard | @belisarius You made my profile quotes. Again. | |
| Oct 22, 2013 at 3:33 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/#!/StackMma/status/392493829443825664 | ||
| Oct 22, 2013 at 3:00 | comment | added | Leonid Shifrin | @GeorgeWolfe But generally, rules seem to be the core paradigm of the Mathematica language - more fundamental than functional or structural or procedural ones. Roman Maeder directly admits this in his "Programming in Mathematica". | |
| Oct 22, 2013 at 2:56 | comment | added | Leonid Shifrin |
@GeorgeWolfe Your simple function is a rule. The only top-level (user-defined) functions in Mathematica which are not rules, AFAIK, are pure functions (defined using Function).
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| Oct 22, 2013 at 2:56 | comment | added | Mike Honeychurch | David Wagners book, which is available as a free download here, has a good description of this. | |
| Oct 22, 2013 at 2:33 | comment | added | Artes |
Rules are not capable to express many underlying results produced by Mathematica. For example consider what Reduce can do better than Solve, for more details read this post: What is the difference between Reduce and Solve?
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| Oct 22, 2013 at 2:25 | comment | added | ssch |
Have a look at DownValues[f] that's where the rules are hiding in this case
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| Oct 22, 2013 at 2:21 | history | edited | George Wolfe | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
deleted 3 characters in body
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| Oct 22, 2013 at 2:20 | comment | added | George Wolfe | @belisarius-I like your title more than mine. | |
| Oct 22, 2013 at 2:19 | comment | added | Dr. belisarius | I was tempted to edit your title: "Do rules rule?" But my nose is still bleeding as a result of a limerick. | |
| Oct 22, 2013 at 2:11 | comment | added | George Wolfe | @LeonidShifrin-I guess this should have been obvious. Rules are enough for doing algebra, but not for calculating a sine or loading a file. Is my simple function transformed into a rule? | |
| Oct 22, 2013 at 1:56 | comment | added | Leonid Shifrin |
Well, obviously a system based on rules only, would only be able to do endless expression rewritings, but not much more. Even if one can build such a model of computation consistently, this is not what we see in Mathematica. From the user's viewpoint, (many) built-in functions are terminals, because their actions are no longer governed by rules. For example, when Mathematica sees Sin[0.15], it calls the built-in numerical implementation of Sin to make a computation - at which point it arguably leaves the rule-based paradigm. And similarly for most other useful lower-level actions.
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| Oct 22, 2013 at 1:49 | history | asked | George Wolfe | CC BY-SA 3.0 |