Extracting a numeric from an ex

[Eduardo M Kalinowski]

Christian Bauer wrote:

> Hi!
>
> On Wed, Dec 06, 2000 at 02:39:29PM -0200, Eduardo M Kalinowski wrote:
> >     I would find it extremely useful if it was possible to get a numeric
> > representing the ex's contents
>
> Given an 'ex e':
>
>   numeric n;
>   if (is_ex_of_type(e, numeric))
>     n = ex_to_numeric(e);

Since this is not documented in the tutorial, and is difficult to be found in
the reference, I've made some little changes to the tutorial to include
description for that (and related functions.) Feel free to use, change, ignore,
etc. the patch, Richard.


--
I tell ya, I was an ugly kid.  I was so ugly that my dad kept the kid's
picture that came with the wallet he bought.
                -- Rodney Dangerfield

Eduardo M Kalinowski     (ekalin at iname.com)
http://move.to/hpkb      http://cami-ufpr.hpg.com.br


-------------- next part --------------
--- ginac.texi.old	Thu Dec  7 21:37:01 2000
+++ ginac.texi	Thu Dec  7 21:57:19 2000
@@ -1298,10 +1298,13 @@
 @c    node-name, next, previous, up
 @section Getting information about expressions
 
 @subsection Checking expression types
 @cindex @code{is_ex_of_type()}
+ at cindex @code{ex_to_numeric()}
+ at cindex @code{ex_to_...}
+ at cindex @code{Converting ex to other classes}
 @cindex @code{info()}
 
 Sometimes it's useful to check whether a given expression is a plain number,
 a sum, a polynomial with integer coefficients, or of some other specific type.
 GiNaC provides two functions for this (the first one is actually a macro):
@@ -1325,10 +1328,24 @@
     is_ex_of_type(e2, numeric);  // false
     is_ex_of_type(e1, add);      // false
     is_ex_of_type(e2, add);      // true
     is_ex_of_type(e1, mul);      // false
     is_ex_of_type(e2, mul);      // false
+@}
+ at end example
+
+When the test made by @code{is_ex_of_type()} returns true, it is safe to
+call one of the functions @code{ex_to_...}, where @code{...} is one of
+the class names (@xref{The Class Hierarchy}, for a list of all
+classes). For example:
+
+ at example
+@{
+    ...
+    if (is_ex_of_type(e, numeric))
+        GiNaC::numeric n = ex_to_numeric(e);
+    ...
 @}
 @end example
 
 The @code{info()} method is used for checking certain attributes of
 expressions. The possible values for the @code{flag} argument are defined