In Maple 11 Standard Interface, occasionally text will be entered in UTF-8 encoding. I have not exactly found a rhyme nor reason for this to occur. Sometimes, it will occur when I am formatting text in a paragraph to be more readable. Sometimes, it will occur when I copy output and paste it into a command line to be executed. Sometimes (and this one is the oddest I've found), it will happen when I go into a line with a string and add a \" inside the string. The UTF-8 encoding is becoming a very large problem, as when it occurs on a command line as in the second instance, Maple will very often interpret the command incorrectly.

Qualifying exams are rapidly turning my brain to mush, so I offer this problem for y'all to figure out: I've grabbed some encoded text from a pre-existing worksheet. I've decoded the text, so now I am left with the typeset version of what the text represents. The command Typesetting:-Parse() should work on this text, and yet it does not. For a concrete example: getstr := "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";

A little under two years ago, I started working on a little project we have here at NCSU. I should perhaps devote another blog entry to discussing that lovely little project... Anyway, there's a lot of Maple code in this project (as it is based in Maple), and I've had to untangle and understand what multiple programmers have done over the years. Last year, I came across one piece of code that I thought was exploiting a bug in Maple: We would take a long string of commands and parse the entire string with a single parse() command. I could never get a Maple worksheet to reproduce those results obtained from piping the command into Maple from the command line. Weird, no?

It's just a silly, simple thing, but I'm going to call attention to it anyway: fopen("file", w); Produces the error message "Error, (in fopen) file mode must be READ or WRITE." This is incorrect. The file mode must be READ, WRITE, or APPEND. Like I said: silly, but worth noting.

Earlier today, I was re-reading an old post when I was inspired. The post asked how one could use typesetting rules to make the call of a procedure typeset as a binary operation. The example used in the post was something along the lines of: myproc(a,b); becomes a <symbol> b; Inspired by a response to that post, I started looking at the help page for the define command and doing some testing in Maple. I was ready to make a reply to that post, when I stumbled upon a mind-boggling error. In the time it's taken me to track down that error (and run various errands), the original post has vanished from my view. Perhaps it still exists somewhere, but for the life of me, I cannot find it; therefore, I post to the next most appropriate place to describe and discuss this shortcoming: This blog.