Foo /: Plus[b_Foo] := b
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg114542] Foo /: Plus[b_Foo] := b
- From: kj <no.email at please.post>
- Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2010 06:46:27 -0500 (EST)
An innocent-looking upvalue for a brand new symbol Foo: In[1]:= Foo /: Plus[b_Foo] := b; Nothing shocking about this rule: it just recapitulates the default behavior of Plus when given a single argument. And it seems to work: In[2]:= Plus[Foo[1]] Out[2]= Foo[1] ...but disaster lurks just around the corner: In[3]:= 1 + Foo[1] During evaluation of In[3]:= $IterationLimit::itlim: Iteration limit of 4096 exceeded. >> Out[3]= Hold[1 + Foo[1]] I was expecting that 1 + Foo[1] would evaluate to itself, not an infinite loop.... So I examined a trace: In[4]:= ToString[ StringForm["``", FullForm /@ Take[Quiet[Trace[1 + Foo[1]]], 10] // ColumnForm]] Out[4]= "HoldForm[Plus[1, Foo[1]]] HoldForm[Plus[1, Foo[1]]] HoldForm[Plus[1, Foo[1]]] HoldForm[Plus[1, Foo[1]]] HoldForm[Plus[1, Foo[1]]] HoldForm[Plus[1, Foo[1]]] HoldForm[Plus[1, Foo[1]]] HoldForm[Plus[1, Foo[1]]] HoldForm[Plus[1, Foo[1]]] HoldForm[Plus[1, Foo[1]]]" Judging from the trace, the evaluator is attempting to evaluate the same expression over and over. The evaluator is supposed to stop when it reaches a fixed point, and that looks like a fixed point if I ever saw one. (In fact, in this case, we started at the fixed point to begin with!) So either there's a very serious bug in the evaluator, or the documentation I read on the subject was wrong about how it's supposed to work. (FWIW, this is Mathematica 7.) Whatever it is that I'm doing wrong, it seems to me *very fundamental*. IOW, this does not look to me like some obscure corner case. If so, I can't understand how I could have missed it in all the reading I've done about Mathematica over the years. It's occurrences like this that fuel my *paranoia* about the Mathematica documentation. If someone can tell me 1) what I'm doing wrong above, and hopefully 2) how to fix it, I'd much appreciate it. Also, if you could point me to where in the documentation I would have learned the answers to these questions I'd be grateful. TIA! ~kj