HoldCompleteForm (or HoldFormComplete)
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg79257] HoldCompleteForm (or HoldFormComplete)
- From: Chris Chiasson <chris.chiasson at gmail.com>
- Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2007 04:23:28 -0400 (EDT)
For a long time now, I have wondered why there is no complete version of HoldForm. A while back I sent in a suggestion for it, but I guess no one wanted to implement it. Places where a HoldCompleteForm would make sense: Trace outputs of expressions with the head Sequence are presently changed to the head HoldForm because HoldForm[Sequence[a,b]] evaluates to HoldForm[a,b]. This can be confusing when trying to debug formatting code or when trying to post-process trace output. HoldCompleteForm would not have this problem. A similar problem would probably happen with Evaluate, though I don't seem to notice it. Reasons against HoldCompleteForm: More possible confusion for people that are trying to grok evaluation control (??) Opposing views are welcome.