help with Mathematica 3.0 'features' under NT
- To: mathgroup@smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg10762] help with Mathematica 3.0 'features' under NT
- From: calvitti@gulam.ces.cwru.edu
- Date: Mon, 2 Feb 1998 00:44:58 -0500
- Organization: Case Western Reserve University
I'm running Mathematica 3.0 under NT 4. 1) To debug code, I insert Print[] statements within functions which I comment out using (* ... *) when not needed (yes, I also comment out the semicolons). However, the next time I open that notebook and such a function is evaluated Mathematica flags it with syntax errors. When I remove the (* ... *), the functions evaluate correctly, as they do *even* after I reinsert the (* ... *). Clearly, I want to avoid doing that everytime I open a notebook. Am I doing something wrong or is this a known bug in 3.0? 2) Is there an elegant way for a default (or optional) argument to a function to take a value which depends on another argument to the same function if it's not explicitly passed? e.g. in "foo" I would like to have "a" default to Length[lst]. foo[lst_List, a_Integer : Length[lst_]] := lst[[a]] but foo[{5,6,7,8}] returns "List", which implies that it's defaulting "a" to 0. I've tried definding an optional argument with Options[foo] = {a -> Length[lst_]} with no luck....Obviously, I can pass a : Infinity and set it appropriately within the functions' body after a quick check, but it doesn't seem like an elegant solution. Thanks for the help. +---------------------------------+ | Alan Calvitti | | Control Engineering | | Case Western Reserve University | +---------------------------------+