MathGroup Archive 2011

[Date Index] [Thread Index] [Author Index]

Search the Archive

Re: Question on Unevaluated

  • To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
  • Subject: [mg117300] Re: Question on Unevaluated
  • From: "Alexey Popkov" <lehin.p at gmail.com>
  • Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2011 06:00:55 -0500 (EST)

Leonid,

Is it possible to imitate the behavior of Unevaluated by setting Attributes in this case:

f[Print[1], Unevaluated[Print[2]], Print[3]]

?

I am wondering, what attributes are temporarily set when we use Unevaluated and how could I imitate this?

Alexey


  ----- Original Message -----
  From: Leonid Shifrin
  To: Alexey ; mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
  Sent: Monday, March 14, 2011 1:39 AM
  Subject: Re: [mg117264] Question on Unevaluated


  Alexey,

  You forgot about the CompoundExpression (;). You only attempted to prevent the evaluation of 1+1 inside
  (1+1;3), but not the total result for CompoundExpression, which is the value of the last statement
  (2+1 in this case). This is what you probably had in mind:

  In[9]:= f[Unevaluated[(1 + 1; 2 + 1)]]

  Out[9]= f[Unevaluated[1 + 1; 2 + 1]]

  What is perhaps less obvious is that you did not prevent the evaluation of 1+1 either. Here is
  a simple way to check it:

  In[14]:= f[Unevaluated[Print["*"]]; 2 + 1]

  During evaluation of In[14]:= *

  Out[14]= f[3]

  The problem is that Unevaluated is only effective once. To totally prevent something from evaluation,
  you have to know the exact number of sub-evaluations (which is generally impossible to know since
  it can be data-dependent), and wrap in as many levels of Unevaluated. In this case,  the following will do:

  In[13]:= f[Unevaluated[Unevaluated[Print["*"]]]; 2 + 1]

  Out[13]= f[3]

  But as I said, this is not a robust approach, and in such cases you will be better to use Hold or similar for
  a persistent holding wrapper, stripping it off  later when needed. You may want to check out e.g. this thread

  http://groups.google.com/group/comp.soft-sys.math.mathematica/browse_thread/thread/bfd67e9122b1fdec

  (my second post there), where I elaborate on these issues.

  HTH.

  Regards,
  Leonid




  On Sun, Mar 13, 2011 at 1:26 PM, Alexey <lehin.p at gmail.com> wrote:

    Hello,

    I am puzzled a bit by the Documentation for Unevaluated. Under "More
    information" field we read:

    "f[Unevaluated[expr]] effectively works by temporarily setting
    attributes so that f holds its argument unevaluated, then evaluating
    f[expr].".

    After reading this I expect that

    f[Unevaluated[1 + 1]; 2 + 1]

    will be returned completely unevaluated as it is when I set HoldFirst
    attribute to f:

    In[2]:= SetAttributes[f, HoldFirst]
    f[Unevaluated[1 + 1]; 2 + 1]

    Out[3]= f[Unevaluated[1 + 1]; 2 + 1]

    But in really we get

    In[1]:= f[Unevaluated[1 + 1]; 2 + 1]

    Out[1]= f[3]

    This leads me to a question: what is implied in documentation? Which
    attributes are temporarily set and to which function?


  • Prev by Date: Re: Joining points of ListPlot
  • Next by Date: Re: How to interactively re-scale graphics with mouse?
  • Previous by thread: Re: Question on Unevaluated
  • Next by thread: Re: Question on Unevaluated