removing those annoying $$$$'s from local variables names?
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg79676] removing those annoying $$$$'s from local variables names?
- From: Nasser Abbasi <nma at 12000.org>
- Date: Wed, 1 Aug 2007 05:12:54 -0400 (EDT)
Hello;
This is a problem I am sure many have seen. May be there is a simple
solution for it, but I can't find it.
This problem is when a function returns back a symbol which is local
to the function, then these synbols will have $nnnn tacked to them,
and so when the caller say prints the symbol, it will have those $'s
numbers, which make it annoying to look it and print, say as a table
or such.
This is an example:
------------- example 1 -------------
foo[] := Module[{c, k},
c = Array[k, 3]
];
c = foo[];
Print[c];
{k$76[1], k$76[2], k$76[3]}
--------------------------------------------------
You see, since k is local to foo[], then when I print it, I see those $
$$ signs.
Only way to remove this $$$'s is to make k global as follows
------------------------ example 2 -------------------
Remove[k];
foo[] := Module[{c},
c = Array[k, 3]
];
c = foo[];
Print[c];
{k[1], k[2], k[3]}
----------------------------------------
But making 'k' global is something I do NOT want to do, since now I
have to worry about 'k' having a value somewhere else in the code, and
it goes against the whole idea of encapsulation. If I start making all
my symbols global, then the code becomes hard to manage.
So, what should one do in this case? How can make all the symbols
local to a function, but at the same time not see these $$$'s when the
symbols are used when they are returned from the function back to the
caller?
thanks,
Nasser