what's wrong with these expressions?
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg104606] what's wrong with these expressions?
- From: dushan <dushanm at spinn.net>
- Date: Wed, 4 Nov 2009 01:41:31 -0500 (EST)
I defined two 3-D vector functions,
{Subscript[n,p][z_], Subscript[n,m][z_]} := {{p1[z],p2[z],p3[z]},
{m1[z],m2[z],m3
[z]}}
where p? and m? are simple functions of z. When displayed they appear
as expected. But when I tried to define the dyadics
{Subscript[nn,p][z_], Subscript[nn,m][z_]} :=
{Outer[Times, Subscript[n,p][z], Subscript[n,p]
[z]],
Outer[Times, Subscript[n,m][z], Subscript[n,m]
[z]]}
I got the error message that the expression 'is incomplete, more input
is needed'.
When I separate this into two independent commands, as
Subscript[nn,p][z_] := Outer[Times, Subscript[n,p][z],
Subscript[n,p][z]]
Subscript[nn,m][z_] := Outer[Times, Subscript[n,m][z],
Subscript[n,m][z]]
no error is generated. Probably irrelevant, but I noticed that in
both cases the outer brackets of the 'm' definition were slightly
smaller than those of the 'p' definition.
To check the result I asked to display the inner product
Subscript[nn,p][z].Subscript[n,p][z]
and got the error message 'Recursion depth 256 exceeded'.
In fact, when, to reassure myself, I tried again to display Subscript
[n,p][z], I got the same error message. So I went back over the
definitions, and this time
Subscript[nn,p][z].Subscript[n,p][z]
produced the expected answer.
What could possibly be changing that sometimes, but not always,
produces the error messages in these two cases? I'm at a loss to know
what to watch out for.
- Dushan
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