Commands, Programs, Functions, and Mathematical Objects

Commands, Programs, Functions, and Mathematical Objects are at the same level as Documents. For example, all of the pages in a Document share a command, program, function, or mathematical object. What this means, practically, is that once an object, such as a function or a vector is created in a Document, it is "visible" from all of the pages of that Document. Each command, program, function, or mathematical object has a name. The name is an alphanumeric sequence (including underscores) that begins with a letter, and may not exceed 32 characters in length.

All single letters: a,b,c, ... x,y,z with the exception of d and e are initially the names of variables. Authors may define and attach commands, programs, functions and mathematical objects to their texts.

The types of mathematical objects in MathScript are:

Functions (These take arguments and return values)

Expressions (These are numbers, or forms)

Variables (These are names: they evaluate to themselves initially)

Vectors (These are input as: [ x1, x2, ..., xn ] Commas separate entries.)

Matrices (There is no special input form)

Equations (These are input as: U = V where U and V are expressions.)

Strings (These are input as: "This is a string")

Lists (These are input as: list(x1, x2, ..., xn) Commas separate entries.)

Constants (This is a built-in type)

All but constants can be created by authors or readers.