2. Calculation examples

The following calculations were carried out using the Axiom [2] system. They can easily be performed with other systems. A few explanations are all that's needed to understand the syntax.

• Every object in Axiom has a name, a type and a value. The : symbol assigns the type and the := symbol assigns the value. So, after executing a : Integer := 5, a represents an integer of value 5.

• When an evaluation is requested, Axiom returns the result value and its type. An environment command can be used to suppress the printing of the result type: this is the case in these examples. When an evaluation request ends with ; , the result of this evaluation is not displayed on the screen: it is an intermediate calculation.