Glossary

Atom

The elements of an M-expression or an expression. It is an object that has no structure below it. See also “Atomic Primitives” in the Mathics3 documentation for user-facing Mathics builtin-functions that work with Atoms.

In the code there are two kinds of Atoms. Those produced by the parser, which get converted to Atoms used in the interpreter. The main difference between the two is that Number is converted into something more specific like, Real or Integer.

apply

application

The process by which we take an M-expression and prepare that expression evaluation at the top-level of the expression given.

In Mathics3 this involves looking at the head symbol (Head[]) and taking action based on information that symbols binding.

There are distinct kinds of application: rule application, and function application.

See also Apply.

binding

Associating a symbol name with a value. In Mathics3, the symbol names an expression or M-expression and the values come from an definitions found in an evaluation. See also Free and bound variables and Name binding.

builtin function

A Mathics3 function which is predefined when the system starts up. There are thousands of these in Mathics3.

boxing

A special type of evaluation that is kicked off by formatting. Mathics3 objects can have formatting or boxing rules associated with them. This process allows objects objects to be displayed in flexibile way depending on the context that the object appears. See Formatted Output.

Definition

A Python class used which provides for a way for a Symbol to get its value, attributes or properties. The mathics builtin function Definition can be used to get information about a Symbol’s definition.

DownValue

A binding in an evaluation which can be used in a subexpression should one of the other binding methods, i.e. ownvalue fail.

Mathics3 function DownValues can be used to query downvalues.

element

elements

In the singular form, element is any node of an Expression or M-expression. The base class BaseElement Class defines properties that an element of the the expression.

At any given level of the expression tree described in an S-expression, the head element or first element is a little different in that it represents a function or operator. So generally when we refer to this kind of element, we will use the more qualified term “head element”.

In the plural, elements when applied to a given level in an expression tree, we generally mean the elements other than the head element. Possibly a better word, might be “arguments” or “function arguments”, since that is the role they play in a S-expression.

In the code there are accessor methods get_elements(), property elements and attribute _elements.

eval

A functional computation. We use this in the functional programming sense; it is distinct from evaluate which is more complex, but has eval() as a component of that.

See eval.

evaluate

evaluation

The process of taking an Mathics3 Expression or M-expression producing a transformation or computation on that.

It involves the distinct phases:

• rewriting the expression, and

• function application which performs eval()

Note that function application can kick off another evaluate(), so this process is recursive.

Expression

This is both a Symbol defined in Mathics3, and a Python class which implements the idea of a generalized List used in evaluation. In this document we are usually referring to the Python class, not the built-in Symbol.

Conceptually, an object in this class represents a sequence atoms, and (nested) Expressions. An expression has two parts, a Head which is expected be a function reference, and 0 or more elements.

Atoms like String or Integer are degenerate forms of expressions. However when we refer to the class, we are referring to non-degenerate or compound Expressions. In the code, both are forms of BaseElement Class.

Form

The top-level item in formatting. Forms formatters when evaluating Boxes. Some examples are StandardForm, OutputForm InputForm, and MathMLForm. However there are many more, and the list will be growing.

format

The output form of Boxing when given a particular kind of Form.

OwnValue

A binding in an evaluation which is intended to be use across a level of an evaluation.

literal value

An constant value, symbol that has a constant value, or an atom that isn’t a symbol. Numbers like 5, The Symbol True, the string “goo” are all examples of literal values.

Lists consisting of literal values are also be literal values.

M-expression

A structure which consists of a sequence atoms, and (nested) expressions. However at each level there is a Head which represents some sort of function.

A M-expression is a generalization of an S-expression which is commonly used in Lisp and functional languages.

While often the head element is a :term:Symbol` in some cases it can be an expression. For example, in Derivative[1][f] the head element is Derivative[1]

The Expression produced by the parser is an M-expression. In evaluation though this pure data structure is transformed and has additional state which can be attached to elements of the expression.

See M-expression.

namespace

A Context.

NValues

Numeric values associated with a symbol. It is one of the kinds of values that can be associated with a Symbol. The others are:

• Attributes,

• DefaultValues,

• FormatValues,

• Messages

• Options

• OwnValues, and

• Upvalues

See the documentation for the Mathics3 builtin function NValues.

pattern

A object found in a definition associated with a symbol an Expression or a part of the Expression. See the documentation for Mathics3 builtin Pattern.

replacement rule

A replacement rule is a kind of Rule that consists of a Pattern and a specification for how to transform the expression using the matching parts. Rules are said to be applied to an Expression to produce a new Expression.

For example F[x_Real]-> x^2 is a rule that when applied to the expression G[F[1.], F[a]] produces the new expression G[1.^2, F[a]]. Certain (internal) rules can also produce changes in the state of the system (writing files, printing a string, changing the definitions of a symbol, or setting a timeout). This happens for internal rules, like the associated to the pattern Set[a,1.], which modifies the definition of a adding the rule a->1.

rewrite

The first phase in evaluating an expression, where an expression is rewritten based on attributes and rewrite rules bound to an expression’s Head Symbol.

For the general concept, see Rewriting.

S-expression

A structure which consists of a sequence atoms, and (nested) expressions. However at each level there is a Head which represents an operator or function. In Mathics3 sometimes this element is instead an expression that acts like a function, so while most expressions that Mathics3 sees are S-expressions, a few are in the the more general M-expression form.

Symbol

A Symbolic variable. These are found in Mathics3 Expressions. The name of the symbol name at at any point in time and place inside an expression has a deifnition to a value and has other properties which may vary. Some Symbols like True are constant and heir value and bindings can’t ever change.

In the Python code the objects in the Symbol class represent Symbols.

Symbol[] is also a Mathics3 builtin-in function. In this document, unless otherwise specified, we are referring to the meaning above.

scope

The range of static piece of Mathics3 code that has the same Context.

subexpression

See element.

UpValue