MathGroup Archive 2005

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

Search the Archive

Re: Why this function does not return a single value

  • To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
  • Subject: [mg60296] Re: Why this function does not return a single value
  • From: Bill Rowe <readnewsciv at earthlink.net>
  • Date: Sat, 10 Sep 2005 06:46:44 -0400 (EDT)
  • Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com

On 9/9/05 at 4:07 AM, marekbr at gmail.com (Marek) wrote:

>I know that Mathematica treats space as a multiplication sign. What
>happens here is that when I remove the multiplication signs in Input
>mode, convert to Standard mode and then back to Input mode the
>multiplication signs reappear. I just did the following experiment.
>Opened fresh Mathematica notebook and typed in (in Standard mode)
>g[x_,a[1]_]:=a*x (no spaces anywhere) Executed that Then converted to
>Input mode and there will be a star between a[1] and the blanc sign _ .

In essence, g[x_,a[1]_]:= a*x is meaningless. This defines a function named g having an arbitrary first arguement you are naming x, an arbitrary second argument you are naming as the function a evaluated at 1 returning the product of the function and the first argument. Is this really what you want?

Perhaps, you want to create a function that returns the product of somehing and the first element of something else. That could be simply done as

g[x_, a_]:= x*First[a]

Or perhaps you want to return the product of something an a function evaluated at 1. That could be done as

g[x_,a_]:= x*a[1]
--
To reply via email subtract one hundred and four


  • Prev by Date: Re: A very EZ Question! Make a Graph!
  • Next by Date: Re: Switching to Mac caused 20x slowdown - please help!
  • Previous by thread: Re: Re: Why this function does not return a single value
  • Next by thread: Re: Why this function does not return a single value