DragonFly On-Line Manual Pages

aamath(1)                        USER COMMANDS                       aamath(1)

NAME
       aamath - renders mathematical expressions as ASCII art

SYNOPSIS
       aamath [ -q | -r ] [ expression ... ]

DESCRIPTION
       aamath is a program that accepts math expressions in infix notation and
       outputs them as ASCII art renderings. Expressions can either be entered
       as command line arguments, or supplied on standard input.

OPTIONS
       -q     Quiet mode.

       -r     More compact radicals.

EXPRESSIONS
       The simplest types of expression in aamath are constants and variables.
       The following are recognized as constants:

       number A number, optionally in scientific notation, optionally followed
              by ellipsis. Precision is limited only by available memory,
              since numbers are represented internally as strings.

       inf    Infinity.

       nabla  The nabla operator.

       ...    Ellipsis.

       A variable is represented by an alphabetic character, optionally
       followed by a sequence of alphanumeric characters. A variable may have
       a subscript: these are represented by an underline character (_)
       followed by an expression. If followed by a backslash character (\),
       the variable name will be rendered with an over score. Variables names
       may also be followed by one or more primes (apostrophes).

       Functions are represented by the function name, which follows the same
       syntax of variable names (including optional subscripts, over score,
       and primes), followed by comma-separated function arguments between
       parentheses. Trigonometric functions are rendered differently if they
       are raised to a power: the exponent will appear between the function
       name and the argument.

       Matrices are represented by a sequence of expressions between square
       brackets; commas separate elements of the same row, and semicolons
       separate rows.

       Other than the standard arithmetic and logical operators, which obey
       the usual precedence rules, aamath also accepts the following
       operations:

       expr1 ^ expr1
              expr1 raised to expr2.

       ~(expr)
              Complex conjugate of the expression.

       expr!  Factorial of the expression.

       The following special functions are also recognized:

       sqrt(expr)
              Square root of the expression.

       root(expr, ord)
              Root of order ord of the expression.

       lim(expr, var -> lim)
              Limit of expr with var tending to lim.

       int(expr, var [= from .. to])
              Integral of expr with respect to var, optionally with with
              limits from and to.

       sum(expr, var [= from .. to])
              Sum of expr for values of var in the interval. The interval is
              optional.

       prod(expr, var [= from .. to])
              Product of expr for values of var in the interval. The interval
              is optional.

BUGS
       It needs a better man page.

AUTHOR
       Mauro Persano (mauro_persano (at) yahoo.com), with help from
       bicoherent.

Version 0.3                      March 1, 2005                       aamath(1)