# What is meant by “curve” in the Mathematica documentation? [closed]

My system: Mathematica 11.2

I am missing something major in how to read the on-line help.

Quoting from Mathematica help:

Arrow[curve, …] represents an arrow following the specified curve.

The examples only ever mention splines, Bezier curves and such. But I want to use this feature for a curve I define myself.

For example, for me a circle is a curve. Yet

Graphics[Arrow[Circle[{0,0},1]]]


gives an error.

What does curve mean here?

I am aware of this thread, so I know how to get a circular arc with an arrow at the end. The code there is mostly Greek to me, but for example

Graphics[Arrow[Table[{Cos[t], Sin[t]}, {t, 0, 2 Pi, Pi/24}]]]


will produce a circle with an arrow at the end.

So more specificially: What input will be recognized as a curve by Arrow?

Or, a more meta variant. Where should I start my studies of the manual to avoid banging my head against walls like this?

• In the documentation of Arrow you will find immediatly some explanations concerning "specification of curves" to be used in Graphics and Graphics3D – Ulrich Neumann Aug 15 '19 at 12:22
• @UlrichNeumann I cannot find it. The word curve is not clickable. Are you saying that curve is not something like a datatype with a specified structure? – Jyrki Lahtonen Aug 15 '19 at 12:37
• I didn't give a"clickable" comment. Look at the answer of m_goldberg (thanks!) – Ulrich Neumann Aug 15 '19 at 13:15
• Jyrki, click on the "Details" section of Arrow. Most of the good info on commands is found in these sections of the docs. – Michael E2 Aug 15 '19 at 14:17
• Thanks @MichaelE2. How did I miss that ? – Jyrki Lahtonen Aug 15 '19 at 17:28

$$\qquad$$Line[…]$$\ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \$$piecewise line segments
$$\qquad$$BezierCurve[…]$$\ \ \ \ \ \ \ \$$composite Bezier curve
$$\qquad$$BSplineCurve[…]$$\ \ \ \ \ \$$B-spline curve
$$\qquad$$JoinedCurve[…]$$\ \ \ \ \ \ \ \$$joined curve object