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.