Re: documentation NestWhile
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg71523] Re: documentation NestWhile
- From: Jean-Marc Gulliet <jeanmarc.gulliet at gmail.com>
- Date: Tue, 21 Nov 2006 07:05:22 -0500 (EST)
- Organization: The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK
- References: <ejtcsq$i4f$1@smc.vnet.net>
ben wrote: > Dear group, > > This is an info about a possible flaw in the documentation of I am afraid that this is misinformation. See below. > > NestWhile[f, expr, test, m, max] > > On my machine the order of arguments as above doesn't work, Are you sure about that? What would have been really nice is to post an example of a non-working-as-claimed-by-the-doc expression. > however > > NestWhile[f, expr, test, max,m] > > is fine. I suppose there is a flow in the manual. No. > Bye > Ben > > the doc > > "NestWhile[f, expr, test] starts with expr, then repeatedly \ > applies f until applying test to the result no longer yields True. \ > NestWhile[f, expr, test, m] supplies the most recent m results as > arguments \ > for test at each step. NestWhile[f, expr, test, All] supplies all > results so \ > far as arguments for test at each step. NestWhile[f, expr, test, m, > max] \ > applies f at most max times. NestWhile[f, expr, test, m, max, n] > applies f an \ > extra n times. NestWhile[f, expr, test, m, max, -n] returns the result > found \ > when f had been applied n fewer times." > > My Mathematica > Version Number: 5.2.0.0 > Platform: X > Note that NestWhile and NestWhileList have the same sequence of arguments. Here we divide by two until the resulting integer is odd. In[1]:= NestWhileList[#1/2 & , 123456, EvenQ] Out[1]= {123456, 61728, 30864, 15432, 7716, 3858, 1929} If your claim were right, that is the fourth argument is the max number of iterations, we should only get the initial number and the first result in the following expression: In[2]:= NestWhileList[#1/2 & , 123456, EvenQ, 1] Out[2]= {123456, 61728, 30864, 15432, 7716, 3858, 1929} Moreover, still with the same hypotheses, we should not get an error message about too many arguments supplied to the test function EvenQ In[3]:= NestWhileList[#1/2 & , 123456, EvenQ, 2] From In[3]:= EvenQ::argx : EvenQ called with 2 arguments; 1 argument is expected. Out[3]= {123456, 61728} Below, we can see that the behavior of NestWhileList and NestWhile is in agreement with the documentation: EvenQ is provided with one argument only and we stop after two iterations regardless of the possible outcome of the next iteration. In[4]:= NestWhileList[#1/2 & , 123456, EvenQ, 1, 2] Out[4]= {123456, 61728, 30864} In[5]:= $Version Out[5]= "5.2 for Microsoft Windows (June 20, 2005)" You will get the same results with NestWhile In[6]:= NestWhile[#1/2 & , 123456, EvenQ] NestWhile[#1/2 & , 123456, EvenQ, 1] NestWhile[#1/2 & , 123456, EvenQ, 2] NestWhile[#1/2 & , 123456, EvenQ, 1, 2] Now, it is still possible that there is something wrong on your system in particular or in Mathematica for X, but, again, that would really help if you document such a claim by giving an example. Regards, Jean-Marc