[Date Index] [Thread Index] [Author Index]

Re: Curl and Div problems

• To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
• Subject: [mg115575] Re: Curl and Div problems
• From: JUN <noeckel at gmail.com>
• Date: Sat, 15 Jan 2011 04:44:54 -0500 (EST)
• References: <igpbj2$ffo$1@smc.vnet.net>

On Jan 14, 3:21 am, Murray Eisenberg <mur... at math.umass.edu> wrote:
> Indeed, when I reported this business about the syntax coloring of Curl
> to Wolfram tech support, they responded quickly to point out it
> indicates shadowing (hence -- they did not explicitly say this -- it's
> not a bug).
>
> The trouble is, before you load the VectorAnalysis package, Curl seems
> to have no meaning other than as a symbol:
>
>    ?Curl
> System`Curl
>
> And if you search for Curl in the Documentation Center, you seem to get
> no item related to that name in the System context.
>
> This is an annoyance, yet I don't see a wholly satisfactory resolution
> to it. Having Curl available in the System context means you can define
> your own definition for it.
>
> On 1/13/2011 3:24 AM, Kevin J. McCann wrote:
>
> > I also noticed this. It seems that Curl is defined in the basic
> > Mathematica commands; hence, the red indicates that you have defined th=
e
> > function twice....
>
> --

As I mentioned in this post:
http://forums.wolfram.com/mathgroup/archive/2010/Dec/msg00408.html
the red highlighting can be fixed by a sneaky command in the notebook.
But that's not a very nice solution because it would "highjack" the
user preferences of whoever I send the notebook to. So even though it
may not technically be a bug, I would insist that this useless System`
definition really needs to be fixed (by incorporating a perhaps
modified version of VectorAnalysis`* into System`).

Jens