Currently, symbolic expressions have 3 identical "derivative" methods: .derivative(), .diff(), and .differentiate() (that is, they are aliases of each other). These have a powerful argument list; foo.diff(x, 3, y, z, 2) differentiates three times with respect to x, then once with respect to y, then twice with respect to z. (And if foo contains only one variable, then foo.diff() differentiates with respect to that variable.)
Polynomials (both univariate and multivariate) have a .diff() method, which takes a required variable argument; univariate polynomials also have a .derivative() method, which does not take an argument. There are also global functions diff(), differentiate(), and derivative(), which are basically wrappers for the .derivative() method: diff(foo, ...) is equivalient to foo.derivative(...). 1) Do we really need three names for this concept? Could we get rid of one or two? If so, can we just remove it, or do we need some sort of deprecation procedure? 2) I plan to make the polynomial methods match the symbolic expression methods. (This should be backward-compatible.) Any objections? Carl --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URLs: http://www.sagemath.org -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
