Changing symbol string names on-the-fly

[Christian Bauer]

Hi!

On Wed, Jul 09, 2003 at 11:02:07AM +0100, Dr. Vassilis S. Vassiliadis wrote:
> Is it possible to change on-the-fly the string names used in a symbol?

There is a symbol::set_name(), but it only works for symbols that are not
already part of an expression.

> The names used internally utilize the object-partitioning
> of my code e.g. :
>         symbol x("system[1].composition.x[2]")
> 
> The output in raw C++ form is desired to be a simple counting
> scheme e.g. for the above symbol:
>         "var[101]"
> will be substituted.

Maybe we should add a "csrc" name for symbols in the same manner as there
is a TeX name. But this seems like overkill...

> I have tried to use an auxiliary vector list with new symbols and
> then substitute the new symbols for the old, using .subs().

subs() would be the recommended solution to your problem.

> However, when the number of substitutions is beyond say a couple of
> hundred even a 2.5 GHz machine cannot run the problem efficiently.

Specifying subs_options::subs_no_pattern might speed it up. If it's still
too slow, find out why and send us a patch. :-)

Maybe subs() should use maps instead of lists?

> Without resorting to brute force outputing and replacing of strings,
> I wonder if there is an elegant and economical way to do the above in GiNaC.

There is another way that is undocumented but gets the job done: symbols
can be assigned expressions, including other symbols:

    symbol a("a"), b("b");
    ex e = a + 2*b;
    cout << e << endl;
     // prints "2*b+a"
    a.assign(symbol("foo"));
    b.assign(symbol("bar"));
    cout << e.eval() << endl;
     // prints "2*bar+foo", the eval() is necessary

Bye,
Christian

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