(maxima.info)Introduction to Rules and Patterns

---

Next: Functions and Variables for Rules and Patterns Prev: Rules and Patterns Up: Rules and Patterns

---

Enter node , (file) or (file)node

34.1 Introduction to Rules and Patterns
=======================================

This section describes user-defined pattern matching and simplification
rules.  There are two groups of functions which implement somewhat
different pattern matching schemes.  In one group are 'tellsimp',
'tellsimpafter', 'defmatch', 'defrule', 'apply1', 'applyb1', and
'apply2'.  In the other group are 'let' and 'letsimp'.  Both schemes
define patterns in terms of pattern variables declared by
'matchdeclare'.

   Pattern-matching rules defined by 'tellsimp' and 'tellsimpafter' are
applied automatically by the Maxima simplifier.  Rules defined by
'defmatch', 'defrule', and 'let' are applied by an explicit function
call.

   There are additional mechanisms for rules applied to polynomials by
'tellrat', and for commutative and noncommutative algebra in 'affine'
package.