Re: Function Option Names
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg118248] Re: Function Option Names
- From: Murray Eisenberg <murray at math.umass.edu>
- Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2011 19:15:25 -0400 (EDT)
As far as I recall, originally all option values were symbolic. (There may have been a few exceptions long ago for values of the Method option, though.) For many options, quite obviously you want as possible values things that you need as built-in symbols in any case, e.g., Red. I think the simple explanation is that the number of possible options began to mushroom, and Wolfram just didn't want to introduce all those new symbols; so they used string values instead. Perhaps a more reasonable thing to do now, in hindsight, would be to make all or most options string-valued. But then that would break an awful lot of code. On 4/17/2011 7:54 AM, mmausr wrote: > I'm curious why some option names are strings (e.g. options to the > FinancialDerivative function), while other option names are symbols > (e.g. options to the ListPlot function). > > More generally, why are some parameters of built-in functions > specified as strings and others specified as symbols that evaluate to > themselves? > > > -- Murray Eisenberg murray at math.umass.edu Mathematics & Statistics Dept. Lederle Graduate Research Tower phone 413 549-1020 (H) University of Massachusetts 413 545-2859 (W) 710 North Pleasant Street fax 413 545-1801 Amherst, MA 01003-9305