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Re: usage messages in packages

• To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
• Subject: [mg58080] Re: usage messages in packages
• From: "Jens-Peer Kuska" <kuska at informatik.uni-leipzig.de>
• Date: Fri, 17 Jun 2005 07:09:28 -0400 (EDT)
• Organization: Uni Leipzig
• References: <5D6FD070-7564-48DC-8311-25DC0738EFA4@akikoz.net> <d8u6ev$87s$1@smc.vnet.net>
• Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com

Hi,

at leaste MS-Windows is "case aware", what mean, 
it save upper
and lower case characters but it does not make a 
difference between
it.

UNIX systems are typical "case sensitive" and the 
used upper and lower
case characters make a difference.

Regards
  Jens

"Andrzej Kozlowski" <akoz at mimuw.edu.pl> schrieb im 
Newsbeitrag news:d8u6ev$87s$1 at smc.vnet.net...
> There are a couple of remarks I would like to 
> add to this posting.
> First, I think it ought to be possible to modify 
> the usage message
> mechanism so that usage messages about functions 
> that are being
> overloaded would be appended to the existing 
> ones rather than
> override them.
> Secondly: I am wondering whether the ability to 
> read in packages with
> both
>
> <<DiscreteMath`Combinatorica`
>
> and
>
> <<discretemath`combinatorica`
>
> is operating system dependent, i.e. whether both 
> of the above work on
> OS's that distinguish between lower and upper 
> case names of files
> and  directories. I think that means all 
> flavours of unix except Mac
> OS X (?)
> Can someone check this?
>
> Andrzej Kozlowski
>
>
>
>
>
> On 17 Jun 2005, at 08:04, Andrzej Kozlowski 
> wrote:
>
>> One aspect of Mathematica packages that seems 
>> to me to be poorly
>> designed is the way package usage messages can 
>> cover up a built in
>> usage messages without any warning. A 
>> particularly irritating
>> instance of this is when a package overloads 
>> the definition of a
>> built in functions so that user receives no 
>> information at all
>> about what happened. As an example compare:
>>
>>
>> ?Normal
>>
>> Normal[expr] converts expr to a normal 
>> expression, from a
>> variety of special forms.
>>
>> load the Combinatorica package:
>>
>>
>> <<discretemath`combinatorica`
>>
>>
>> ?Normal
>>
>> Normal is a value that options VertexStyle, 
>> EdgeStyle, and \
>> PlotRange can take on in ShowGraph.
>>
>> Another curious thing. Quit the Kernel and now 
>> try again loading
>> the Combinatorica package in a different way
>>
>> In[1]:=
>> <<discretemath`
>>
>> This time the usage message was not covered up:
>>
>> In[2]:=
>> ?Normal
>>
>> Normal[expr] converts expr to a normal 
>> expression, from a \
>> variety of special forms.
>>
>> I had never realised that one could load 
>> directories of packages by
>> using only small letters as in the above 
>> example until I saw Maxim
>> doing it. This also works:
>>
>> << discretemath`combinatorica`
>>
>>
>> Actually, this is consistent with the 
>> documentation which says:
>>
>>
>>      <<dir` , initialize all packages from 
>> directory dir,
>>      <<dir`package` , read in a package from 
>> the named directory
>>
>> but I had always assumed that "dir" and 
>> "package" actually meant
>> "Dir" and "Package".
>>
>>
>> Andrzej Kozlowski
>> Chiba, Japan
>> http://www.akikoz.net/andrzej/index.html
>> http://www.mimuw.edu.pl/~akoz/
>>
>>
>>
> 

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: Re: usage messages in packages
    • From: Andrzej Kozlowski <andrzej@akikoz.net>