Re: keeping fractions from being simplified?
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg22503] Re: keeping fractions from being simplified?
- From: "David Bailey" <db at salford-software.com>
- Date: Sun, 5 Mar 2000 00:24:41 -0500 (EST)
- Organization: University of Salford, Salford, Manchester, UK
- References: <892phl$pjn@smc.vnet.net>
- Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com
Gerhard Killesreiter <killesreiter at physik.uni-freiburg.de> wrote in message news:892phl$pjn at smc.vnet.net... > > Hi there! > > I am using mathematica 3.0. I would like to keep fractions _not_ > simplified, e.g. 12/9 should stay 12/9 and not become 4/3. Can I set > this behaviour globally, that is without stating Hold[12/9]? > Any help is appreciated! > Gerhard I think the first question is what exactly you want to do with these fractions. For example, do you want to multiply them together, in which case do you want Times[12/9,9/10] to end up as 108/90 or what. If you need the feature badly enough you could define your own objects - say frac[12,9] and then define some mathematical operations on these objects, for example: frac /: (frac[a_, b_]frac[c_, d_]) := frac[a c, b d] You could even use MakeBoxes to arrange for these objects to print like fractions (or maybe slightly differently to avoid confusion with ordinary fractions). David Bailey Salford Software