Mastering SYMBOLANG: a practical guide to building and manipulating symbolic expressions
This comprehensive manual explains how to work with a powerful algebraic manipulation system. Learn how lists, expressions, and attributes interact to create, compare, and transform symbolic data.
SYMBOLANG is presented with clear explanations and concrete examples. It covers how to declare and access attribute‑value lists, how to create and protect lists and expressions, and how to navigate complex sublists and expression trees. The book also shows how to use a variety of routines to evaluate, compare, and modify symbolic structures, making it a valuable reference for developers and researchers working with symbolic computation.
- Understand attribute‑value lists and how to access or modify them (ITSVAL, NAMEDL, MAKEDL, NFVAL, and related concepts).
- Learn to create, copy, erase, and protect lists and expressions, including safe handling of sublists and protected forms.
- Explore a suite of operations for building and dissecting expressions, such as list readers, sublist copying, term extraction, and expression substitution.
- See practical examples, including a preprocessor workflow and code generation approaches for symbolic languages.
Ideal for readers who design or use symbolic algebra systems, implement expression evaluators, or study advanced list‑processing techniques in symbolic languages.
Bernstein teaches physics at Hampshire College, holds a visiting research position at M.I.T., and is president of ISIS.