On Sep 1, 11:55 am, David Kirkby <david.kir...@onetel.net> wrote: > Has anyone given thought for making Sage read Mathematica syntax? I've > seen a recent video from William stating it is NOT an aim of Sage to > be clone of any of the 4 M's - in contrast, Octave is a clone of > MATLAB. > > Whilst parsing Mathematica code is not an aim of Sage, I doubt many > would are argue that it would be a useful addition if Sage could read > Mathematica code, and do something useful with it. > > I could see several way one might attack such a problem. > > 1)) Use yacc/lex to create a C library, then call that from Sage. > 2) Write the parser in Python. > 3) Pass the input directly to ECL (Lisp interpreter) and do the > parsing in Lisp. > > Personally I'd be most comfortable in using lex/yacc/C, less > comfortable in Python and even less so in Lisp, as I don't have a clue > about Lisp. > > But actually, the latter approach, using Lisp, which personally I'd be > *least* comfortable with, might actually be the *most* sensible > approach. Why? > > 1) Most computer algebra systems are based on some form of Lisp - > including Mathematica I believe, so it can't be a bad choice. > > One might even argue Lisp might have been a better choice than Python > than Sage, though there are far more Python programmers than Lisp > programmers, so that's possibly not true. In fact, I think it's fair > to sage having Python skills on ones CV is more worthwhile than Lisp > skills. > > (flames for even considering not using Python to /dev/null). > > 2) I think there's a library interface to ECL, which could probably > avoid the need for messing around with pexpect. Send the input > directly to ECL. > > 3) There is also a paper describing a Mathematica parser in Lisp in a > peer reviewed journal. > > http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1089419.1089421 > > For those of us not affiliated with an academic institution and so > have no access to a library (boy, do I miss that), a paper by the same > name at > > http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/~fateman/papers/lmath.ps > > is probably almost identical > > 4) The source code for that Mathematica parser is available. > > http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~fateman/mma1.6/ > > whilst most obviously written for an old version of Mathematica, a few > source files were updated in 2006, suggesting it probably works with > semi-recent versions of Mathematica. In any case, Mathematica is > reasonably backwards compatible. > > 5) The author of the Mathematica parser in Lisp is alive and kicking, > and a reader of sage-devel. > > Getting Sage to read Mathematica and do useful things with it, should > make an interesting project for a computer science student. Although I > don't know much about this, I would be guess this would have to be an > MSc project, not an undergraduate one as I doubt doing any of this > would be trivial. > > Once such a parser existed which was usable from Sage, a mathematician > could probably do useful things with it. > > Of course, I'm aware Sage has an interface to Mathematica, but that > needs a Mathematica license to be of any use at all. > > Realistically, in my personal opinion, Sage will never have the > combined functionality of MATLAB, Maple and Mathematica. In fact, I > don't believe it will ever have the full functionality of any of those > 3. (I also accept that Sage is far ahead of Mathematica in some areas > such as number theory). On that basis, there's little point in > worrying about a 100% complete implemention of a Mathematica parser. > > Has anyone got any comments?
whuss at some point added something like this for both Mma and Maple, though very basic, as part of another ticket (symbolic sums?). I can't remember where it is and am unfortunately having some internet issues :( but anyway I believe this code was merged into Sage at some point. - kcrisman -- To post to this group, send an email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URL: http://www.sagemath.org
