Re: Head logic
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg97076] Re: [mg97033] Head logic
- From: Leonid Shifrin <lshifr at gmail.com>
- Date: Wed, 4 Mar 2009 07:15:14 -0500 (EST)
- References: <200903031055.FAA02912@smc.vnet.net>
Hi Carlos, The reason is that Equal tests for equality by value, not syntactic equality. And symbols generally have no value, otherwise they would evaluate to that value. On two symbols, for which there is no rule built in the system (or added by the user) telling Mathematica that they should be considered equal, Equal (==) will return unevaluated, which is correct because they are neither necessarily equal nor necessarily different. Use SameQ (===) for syntactic comparison instead of Equal, and you will get what you want. Alternatively, use TrueQ[lhs==rhs] - this will force Mathematica to give False whenever the result does not evaluate to True. However, for the case at hand the first method (SameQ) seems more appropriate. Regards, Leonid On Tue, Mar 3, 2009 at 1:55 PM, <carlos at colorado.edu> wrote: > Entering > > ClearAll[r]; > Head[r] > Head[r]!=Symbol > Head[r]==Symbol > > give Symbol, False and True as expected. But > > Head[r]==Integer > > evaluates to Symbol==Integer. Why not False? > Head[r] is certainly not Integer. Likewise > > r=4; > Head[r]==Integer > Head[r]!=Symbol > Head[r]==Symbol > > give True (correct) but Integer!=Symbol and Integer==Symbol. > Why not True and False? > >
- References:
- Head logic
- From: carlos@colorado.edu
- Head logic