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Re: = ?

• To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
• Subject: [mg121994] Re: = ?
• From: Bill Rowe <readnews at sbcglobal.net>
• Date: Sat, 8 Oct 2011 05:34:08 -0400 (EDT)
• Delivered-to: l-mathgroup@mail-archive0.wolfram.com

On 10/6/11 at 4:23 AM, weh at snafu.de (Dr. Wolfgang Hintze) wrote:

>What about setting up a regular column "esoteric of the week" naming
>functions that are rarely used ?

The difficulty is a determination of rarely used. Who decides?
And how?

>I would start with

>Clip[x]

>which I (shame on me) didn't know until this evening. Did you?

Yes, but for me Clip is not a rarely used function. It is not
that I use it as often as say /@. But, it is a function I use
often enough I don't need to look up the syntax. For me at
least, the operational definition of rarely used would be those
functions I have to look up syntax to use correctly.

Also, rarely used isn't really equivalent to esoteric. For
example, I rarely use DSolve and would have to look up syntax to
be sure I was correctly using it. But I wouldn't consider DSolve
as esoteric.