From help-request at octave dot org Thu Jan  5 15:47:12 2006
Subject: Re: rational numbers only
From: "John W. Eaton" <jwe at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu>
To: Jordi Gutierrez Hermoso <jordigh at gmail dot com>
Cc: help at octave dot org
Date: Thu, 5 Jan 2006 16:46:41 -0500

On  5-Jan-2006, Jordi Gutierrez Hermoso wrote:

| On 1/5/06, Jorge Barros de Abreu <ficmatin01 at solar dot com dot br> wrote:
| > Hi.
| >
| > ?????Which the variable name that force maxima to work with ratonal numbers
| > only???
| 
| Octave really isn't built for that kind of operations. There are
| functions that do it as other people in this thread have mentioned,
| but if you want a symbolic calculator, you're better off using a
| dedicated CAS like Maxima or YACAS.

You could also write a new user-defined data type for rational
numbers.  Simple arithmetic for scalars and maybe even matrices would
not be too hard.  But unless there are existing libraries for other
operations, it would be a lot of work to get something like svd of a
rational matrix working (if that would even make sense).

jwe



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