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Unprotecting "I"

• To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
• Subject: [mg64787] Unprotecting "I"
• From: Chris Young <c1572young at earthlink.net>
• Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2006 19:28:09 -0500 (EST)
• Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com

I'd like to be able to occasionally use all the letters of the alphabet 
(or at least the first 12 or so), both small and capital letters, for 
variables. I think it's the easiest way to present a lot of formulas. I 
was able to Unprotect everything except "I", which Mathematica reserves 
for the "imaginary unity", "i". Is there any way to temporarily 
unprotect "I"?

(Also, I wish there was some way to copy the example from my notebook 
without all the extraneous back-slashes, etc.)

What I get from Mathematica is as follows:

Unprotect[I]
    Protect::locked: "Symbol \[ImaginaryI] is locked.

Attributes[I]
    {Locked, Protected, ReadProtected}

ClearAttributes[I, Locked]
    Attributes::locked: Symbol \[ImaginaryI] is locked.

Clear[I]
    Clear::wrsym: Symbol \[ImaginaryI] is Protected.

ClearAll[I]
    ClearAll::"wrsym": "Symbol \[ImaginaryI] is Protected."

Any help appreciated.

-- Chris Young
    c56young at earthlink.net