Regarding the use of juxtaposition for multiplication vs. functional
application etc. it is instructive to compare computer-algebra systems
which adapt these competing approaches. E.g. Mathematica uses
juxtaposition for multiplication, but Macsyma and Maple do not. Many
view this as a serious design flaw in Mathematica's syntax, and you
may find further discussion of the issue in Richard Fateman's
(·······@peoplesparc.Berkeley.EDU) long paper on problems with
Mathematica (this appeared last year in the Jnl. Symbolic.
Computation, and is also available online somewhere at Berkeley)
···@zurich.ai.mit.edu (William G. Dubuque) writes:
>Regarding the use of juxtaposition for multiplication vs. functional
>application etc. it is instructive to compare computer-algebra systems
>which adapt these competing approaches. E.g. Mathematica uses
>juxtaposition for multiplication, but Macsyma and Maple do not. Many
>view this as a serious design flaw in Mathematica's syntax, and you
>may find further discussion of the issue in Richard Fateman's
>(·······@peoplesparc.Berkeley.EDU) long paper on problems with
>Mathematica (this appeared last year in the Jnl. Symbolic.
>Computation, and is also available online somewhere at Berkeley)
Found the paper in tex format by ftping at peoplesparc.Berkeley.edu.
Look under pub/papers for file called mathrev.tex.Z. Jay