Re: What determines what is assigned to Out[]?
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg80358] Re: What determines what is assigned to Out[]?
- From: Andrew Moylan <andrew.j.moylan at gmail.com>
- Date: Sat, 18 Aug 2007 05:42:07 -0400 (EDT)
- References: <fa3dti$14c$1@smc.vnet.net>
Right, Module returns the result of evaluating its second argument,
which was Null in the examples I gave. It's also Null in the examples
you give below. I found a definitive statement in the documentation
for CompoundExpression. Although CompoundExpression[a, ..., Null]
returns Null, it assignments the result of its second-last argument to
Out[n].
On Aug 17, 4:06 pm, Bill Rowe <readnews... at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> On 8/16/07 at 7:20 AM, andrew.j.moy... at gmail.com (Andrew Moylan)
> wrote:
>
> >I am starting to see a pattern here. Can anyone explain the exact
> >rule that determines what gets assigned to the Out[] variable?
> >This is important because, for example, compare the following fairly
> >equivalent pieces of code:
> >Module[{}, m = RandomReal[1, 10000000]; flag = 1;]
> >Module[{}, flag = 1; m = RandomReal[1, 10000000];]
> >The former assigns 1 to Out[], whereas the latter assigns a roughly
> >80MB lump of random reals to Out[]!
>
> Right. Unless you specifically direct otherwise in you code,
> Module returns the value of the last statement executed. This is
> no different than doing:
>
> In[8]:= RandomReal[1, 10];
> flag = 1;
> %
>
> Out[10]= 1
>
> In[11]:= flag = 1;
> RandomReal[1, 10];
> %
>
> Out[13]= {0.972967,0.535982,0.116394,0.315125,0.593156,0.621663,0.\
> 0665424,0.124622,0.785656,0.329686}
>
> outside of Module. In fact, there is essentially no advantage to
> using the construct, Module[{},... If no variables are included
> in the first argument, there will be no local variables and
> Module has essentially no effect on the results.
> --
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