Metastable expressions in Mathematica
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg119622] Metastable expressions in Mathematica
- From: David Bailey <dave at removedbailey.co.uk>
- Date: Tue, 14 Jun 2011 06:14:44 -0400 (EDT)
Everyone knows that expressions in Mathematica get automatically evaluated as far as is possible. Furthermore, most people realise that Mathematica must have a way to track changes to the definitions of symbols, so as to avoid excessive evaluation. Here is the typical case: In[672]:= Clear[f] In[673]:= test = g[f[a]] Out[673]= g[f[a]] 'test' contains an expression containing an unevaluated function call to f In[674]:= test Out[674]= g[f[a]] Now we give f a definition, and confirm that Mathematica 'knows' the expression held by 'test' needs to be reevaluated: In[675]:= f[x_] := x^2; In[676]:= test Out[676]= g[a^2] So far as expected, but now we define f in a way that allows it to be switched on and off without actually changing its definition: In[677]:= Clear[f] In[679]:= switch = False; In[680]:= f[x_] := x^2 /; switch In[681]:= test = g[f[a]] Out[681]= g[f[a]] In[682]:= switch = True; Here we see that Mathematica fails to notice that the expression can be further evaluated - the expression in 'test' is metastable. In[683]:= test Out[683]= g[f[a]] Some processes obviously cause complete evaluation: In[684]:= Uncompress[Compress[test]] Out[684]= g[a^2] Others, rather surprisingly, do not! (Dialog) In[687]:= test /. f -> f (Dialog) Out[687]= g[f[a]] I don't really consider metastable expression to be a bug - more a curiosity - and it would be undesirable to slow Mathematica processing to try to fix this. However, metastable expressions, do give a window into the methods Mathematica uses to minimise the reevaluation of expressions. For example, it might be interesting to repeat the above 10000 times with different symbols, to determine if Mathematica is always consistent in this regard. I have never seen this effect discussed, so I would be interested in links to previous discussions, if any. David Bailey http://www.dbaileyconsultancy.co.uk
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