About programming Mathematica [Newbie question]
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg32662] About programming Mathematica [Newbie question]
- From: Wyvern <wyvern5 at mac.com>
- Date: Sat, 2 Feb 2002 01:19:38 -0500 (EST)
- Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com
Hi. I'm new to Mathematica and I'm having some trouble understanding what metaphor it uses for programming. I've used Octave a bit (I did a simple simulation of a pursuit problem) and, in Octave, I simply made a file in emacs (with a .m ext) and typed the filename in the Octave command line. Not exactly sophisticated, but it was easy. What would the comparable Mathematica technique? Surely it cannot be to do a function[] := (and then some operations) in a notebook. That would mean that I'd have to do cut and paste into a new cell to make any changes, which would certainly be a hassle compared to switching windows and doing c-x c-s, then re-executing inside Octave. Surely there is a more elegant solution, something more self-contained? One might ask, if Octave is so darn wonderful, why not do it there? Well, it's not very user-friendly, and the whole point of this exercise that I need to program is to get familiar with a tool like Mathematica. (I need to solve a Hungarian method 10x10 matrix problem.) If you can point me the right way as regards to programming, I'm pretty sure I can throw together an algorithm, but if you could direct me to an algorithm for determining the optimal system for finding zero-covering lines, I would be very grateful. Please forgive the obviousness of the solution to my problem... I only got this software recently. Wyvern