Just like your pocket calculator, Maple can do more than simple arithmetic.
For example, if you'd like to determine the square root of 6.3, you can simply
do
| sqrt(6.3); |
This is an example of the use of a Maple built-in function. How is a built-in
function used different from a binary operator such as ``+''?
Click here for the answer
Of course, Maple has more built-in functions that simply sqrt. For
example, it also has a function called gcd that will compute the greatest
common divisor of two integers. Here's an example of gcd in action:
| gcd(12,20); |
Notice that gcd has two arguments, separated by commas.
Maple has literally hundreds of built-in functions, many of which are generally
useful and others of which are specialized to particular applications. We will
use three built-in functions to complete the implementation of our model, and
you will encounter many more in future lessons.
Joseph L. Zachary
Hamlet Project
Department of Computer Science
University of Utah