Hi

I'm looking for the equivalent to Excel ASCII functions
code("a" )=97 (space after " added to avoid a winking Smiley!)
char(97)="a"
and so on.

Does anyone know if they're hidden in a Plugin somewhere, or if there's an easy way to create them?

Many thanks
Brian

"a"

There are some conversion functions in Maxima.



ascii.sm (4 KiB) downloaded 39 time(s).

Hello.



Another example is available here: https://en.smath.info/forum/yaf_postsm47084_SMath-Studio-0-99-6617--12-February-2018.aspx#post47084

Thanks for your help gentlemen.
Brian

Wrote

Hello.



Another example is available here: https://en.smath.info/forum/yaf_postsm47084_SMath-Studio-0-99-6617--12-February-2018.aspx#post47084

There seems to be something special with the characters generated this way. They will be backconverted to code sequence if used in Maxima region, label region or table region.


Zeichenketten.sm (57 KiB) downloaded 32 time(s).

Wrote

There are some conversion functions in Maxima.



ascii.sm (4 KiB) downloaded 39 time(s).

Now I know why cint("A" ) does not work. It is a translation problem from SMath to Maxima, see SS-3543.

They are special indeed, you can see it by exposing the plain text with copy/paste... The syntax is handled at code level by the math region (like a bbcode or a markdown text)

Wrote

They are special indeed, you can see it by exposing the plain text with copy/paste... The syntax is handled at code level by the math region (like a bbcode or a markdown text)

This is strange. I understand that the \xxxx\ markup can be convenient at input time or if the characters are generated from computed codes. But why need they to be stored this way? SMath can store and display the corresponding symbols directly.

I'd vote for an instant conversion and storage as unicode character, at least for those which actually can be displayed.
This would be closer to the paradigm "what you see is what is done".

Wrote

But why need they to be stored this way? SMath can store and display the corresponding symbols directly.

Because many characters are taken by the math syntax... +-*/.,:;<>(){}@#! (and many more)... converting the code in character may cause trouble while reading back the code.

I see the point. But as far as string literals are concerned, a conversion could be done without harm (except for string markup character).

Since we have num2str() and str2num() I don't think it is a good idea neither when they are in a math string; better to have some functions like in maxima to do it explicitely. Apart this, the only other improvement that I might think is to allow \C\ where C is the special character instead of his code (not sure if might have side effects, though).

Indeed, a function to generate un-encoded/un-escaped pristine special symbols for use in strings would do the job.

Then I would recommend to not conceal the encoding/escaping of symbols in strings but rather just expose the raw version. Then nobody would expect to see the pretty-printed version in custom regions.

Not sure if this is what you mean, but we have GlobalProfile.ReplaceUnicodeChars(text) to decode term text.