Understanding Mathematica's evaluation procedure
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg117407] Understanding Mathematica's evaluation procedure
- From: Alexey <lehin.p at gmail.com>
- Date: Thu, 17 Mar 2011 06:33:59 -0500 (EST)
Good day, How do I understand, the main principle of the Mathematica's evaluation is to continue to make replacements until the expression stops changing. The sole that falls out of this is work of such basic as Sin[], Total[] etc. As I understand, by default no replacement rules are associated with these functions, and they work "themselves". I was always confounded by this aspect of the system. The edge between replacement and "the true functions which do the job" always remained stumbling-block for my understanding. Can anybody clarify this moment?