MINI-CAS, a MINImal Computer Algebra System Copyright (c) 2011 Daniel Herring Distributed under the Boost Software License, Version 1.0. (See accompanying file LICENSE_1_0.txt or copy at http://www.boost.org/LICENSE_1_0.txt) ** Install ** What?!? Not much to do. I provide an ASDF system definition for convenience. ** What it does ** symbolic math (sufficient for deriving my robot kinematic and dynamic equations) (hopefully without introducing bugs) ** Why another CAS ** This is a hard question. Good CAS software is hard to write, there are numerous mature systems, etc. I was looking for - a Common Lisp CAS library (for integration with other code) - basic ops: + - * / sin cos - matrix support - derivatives Original plan was to use [Open]Axiom/Fricas or Maxima; but these require glue code to generate and parse "human-style" input, spawn subprocesses, etc. Not to mention their massive size. Then I tried modernizing Mock-MMA. Not fun. Got the obvious things fixed; but there were still major issues (and no matrix support). Where are the CL CAS libraries? Not finding them, I slapped this together. Anyone wanting to make a real CAS out of this should read some CAS books or at least know abstract algebra. Joel Cohen wrote a set of practical CAS books; most others focus on details such as polynomial factorization, Groebner bases, etc. http://web.cs.du.edu/~jscohen/ Computer Algebra and Symbolic Computation: Elementary Algorithms, AK Peters Ltd., 2002 Computer Algebra and Symbolic Computation: Mathematical Methods, AK Peters Ltd., 2003 ** License ** Normal disclaimers apply. I only spot-checked the math; hopefully the simplifications are simple enough to not introduce bugs. License described at http://www.boost.org/users/license.html