Re: [Axiom-developer] Unions in Spad

[Bill Page]

On 7/11/07, Gabriel Dos Reis <address@hidden> wrote:
> On Wed, 11 Jul 2007, Bill Page wrote:
> ...
> | Another issue. It seems strange to me that Spad does not have any
> | primitives for exception handling, e.g. 'try'.
>
> Agreed.  More strangely to me, it seems odd that Spad does not
> have algebraic data types ans pattern matching (Boot does).
>
> They support different styles of programming.

Maybe, just maybe, it is reasonable to associate Spad more with the
earlier "ScratchPad I" project. As I understand it from the scant
literature about these early days, ScratchPad I was a more
"symbolically oriented" computer algebra system. I don't know if there
is any code left at all anywhere for this first attempt. But it is my
understanding that most of the same people were involved again in the
"ScratchPad II" project that eventually became Axiom. I think that
ScratchPad II deliberately tried to introduce a different style of
programming.

In my opinion this is yet one more reason why Spad should *not* be
removed from the core Axiom system.

Regards,
Bill Page.