Other Alias
yacasSYNOPSIS
yacas [options] [{filename}]
DESCRIPTION
This manual page documents briefly the yacas and yacas_client commands.
Yacas (Yet Another Computer Algebra System) is a small and highly flexible general-purpose computer algebra language. The syntax uses a infix-operator grammar parser. The distribution contains a small library of mathematical functions, but its real strength is in the language in which you can easily write your own symbolic manipulation algorithms. The core engine supports arbitrary precision arithmetic, and is linked with the GNU arbitrary precision math library, and is able to execute symbolic manipulations on various mathematical objects by following user-defined rules.
This manual page was written for the Debian GNU/Linux distribution
because the original program does not have a manual page.
OPTIONS
A summary of options is given below
- -c
- Inhibit printing of prompts "In>" and "Out>". Useful for non-interactive sessions.
- -f
- Reads standard input as one file, but executes only the first statement in it. (You may want to use a statement block to have several statements executed.)
- -p
- Does not use terminal capabilities, no fancy editing on the command line and no escape sequences printed. Useful for non-interactive sessions.
- -t
- Enable some extra history recall functionality in console mode: after executing a command from the history list, the next unmodified command from the history list will be automatically entered on the command line.
- {filename}
- Reads and executes commands in the filename and exits. Equivalent to "Load()".
- -v
- Prints version information and exits.
- -d
- Prints the path to the Yacas library directory and exits
The default operation of Yacas is to run in the interactive console mode. Yacas accepts several options that modify its operation. Options can be combined.
In addition to the console mode, an experimental persistent
session facility is provided through the script
yacas_client. By means of this script, the user can
configure third-party applications to pass commands to a constantly
running "Yacas server" and get output. The "Yacas server" is
automatically started by yacas_client. It may run
on a remote computer; in that case the user should have a user account
on the remote computer and privileges to execute
yacas_client there, as well as rsh or ssh
access. The purpose of yacas_client is to enable
users to pass commands to Yacas within a persistent
session while running another application such as a text editor.
The script yacas_client reads
yacas commands from the standard input and
passes them to the running "Yacas server"; it then waits 2 seconds and
prints whatever output yacas produced up to
this time. Usage may looks like this:
8:20pm Unix>echo "x:=3" | yacas_client Starting server. [editvi] [gnuplot] True; To exit Yacas, enter Exit(); or quit or Ctrl-c. Type ?? for help. Or type ?function for help on a function. Type 'restart' to restart Yacas. To see example commands, keep typing Example(); In> x:=3 Out> 3; In> 8:21pm Unix>echo "x:=3+x" | yacas_client In> x:=3+x Out> 6; In> 8:23pm Unix>yacas_client -stop In> quit Quitting... Server stopped. 8:23pm Unix>
Persistence of the session means that yacas remembered the value of "x" between invocations of yacas_client. If there is not enough time for Yacas to produce output within 2 seconds, the output will be displayed the next time you call yacas_client.
The "Yacas server" is started automatically when first used and can be stopped either by quitting yacas or by an explicit option yacas_client -stop, in which case yacas_client does not read standard input.
The script yacas_client reads standard input and writes to standard output, so it can be used via remote shell execution. For instance, if an account "user" on a remote computer "remote.host" is accessible through ssh, then yacas_client can be used remotely like this:
echo "x:=2;" | ssh [email protected] yacas_client
On a given host computer running the "Yacas server", each user currently may have only one persistent Yacas session.
AUTHOR
yacas was written by Ayal Pinkus ([email protected]). yacas is available at http://www.xs4all.nl/~apinkus/yacas.html (link to URL http://www.xs4all.nl/~apinkus/yacas.html) .
This manual page was written by Gopal Narayanan ([email protected]) for the Debian GNU/Linux system (but may be used by others).