INFORMATION

General information

  • Download yacas-latest.tar.gz the complete source code distribution.
  • The distribution can also be found at Source Forge. The Windows distribution can also be found here.
  • Dan McMahill made a NetBSD distribution for Yacas.
  • View documentation on-line This documentation is included with the source code distribution.
  • View licence on-line This license is included with the source code distribution.
  • A selection of calculations from the Wester benchmark.
  • Some additional example calculations that Yacas can currently perform can be found here.
  • mailing list a mailing list for Yacas.
  • EiC. The readline.c file was used for the Linux console application.
  • Superficie a 3d graph plotter using OpenGL that looks quite promising! Superficie sports some Yacas scripts to render parametric surface plots.
  • texmacs a nice looking mathematical document editor which supports yacas sessions.
  • minilzo A lovely little and fast compression library that Yacas uses internally, for storing scripts in an archive.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

What is a computer algebra system?

A computer algebra system (CAS) is a program that can manipulate mathematical expressions, potentially reducing the time it takes to perform cumbersome but trivial calculations. It does this symbolically, so a CAS can return a mathematical expression as a resulting answer.

Why cannot Yacas solve my homework/integrodifferential matrix operator constraint equations/ [insert another problem]?

Yacas is developed by a small group of volunteers and does not yet perform many of the sophisticated tasks that a modern CAS can theoretically handle. Ask the users' mailing list (see links below) if you have a specific problem that is covered in the manual and should be solvable by Yacas. Yacas consists of a small kernel and a library of interpreted scripts in the easy-to-use Yacas language; the scripts contain all CAS-related functionality. You are encouraged to contribute library code for solving a specific problem.

I want to use Yacas from inside my own application. What should I do?

Yacas can be used in several ways:
  • as a command-line application that takes text from standard input and prints text to standard output;
  • as a server listening on a port (also on remote hosts);
  • as a dynamically linked (shared) library.
The first two options allow you to use the functionality of an installed Yacas application directly from another application without having to link to any Yacas code.

For information on embedding Yacas as a library, see the embed/ subdirectory of the source tree and the manuals. Please note that Yacas is Free Software in the sense of the Free Software Foundation, distributed under the GNU General Public License (GPL). If you embed Yacas or link to its components and distribute the resulting application, you are required to license it under the GPL.

What platforms are supported?

Yacas is very portable and runs on many platforms and OSes, including Unix flavors (including GNU/Linux and derivatives), Mac OS X, EPOC32, Ipaq and probably other devices running embedded Linux, and 32-bit Microsoft Windows (TM). The most functional version is the GNU/Linux version (supporting e.g. an on-the-fly compilation of plugins).

Yacas gives an error message, a wrong answer, etc. What's wrong?

Most probably it is a bug in Yacas, especially if you expected a correct answer after reading the manuals. Please let us know by posting to the developer's list (see links below).

Status

The language is very much in a finished state. Any code written for it should be usable in future versions. Also, the language should prove very easy to learn.

Yacas is written in very clean c++ code, and is very portable . It can compile stand-alone, and is easily embeddable. Yacas contains a native arbitrary precision arithmetic module, but can also be used with GMP.

Things implemented include: arbitrary precision, rational numeric, vector, complex, and matrix computations (including inverses and determinants and solving matrix equations), derivatives, solving, Taylor series, numerical solving (Newtons method), and a lot more non-mathematical algorithms. The language natively supports variables and user-defined functions. There is basic support for univariate polynomials, integrating functions and tensor calculations.

Backups are put on the net on a regular basis. The very latest versions can be found here. They are generally stable versions.

The to do list can be found here.

We now have a 1024x768 screenshot of a Yacas session under GNU/Linux.

The state of Yacas as of the beginning of 2002 is documented in the paper: Ayal Z. Pinkus and Serge Winitzki, "YACAS: a do-it-yourself computer algebra system", Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence 2385, pp. 332 - 336 (Springer-Verlag, 2002).

Your feedback is much appreciated: please email yacas-devel AT lists DOT sourceforge DOT net (email obfuscated for obvious reasons).

Mailing list

There is a main mailing list for yacas at yahoogroups.com. This is a relatively low-bandwidth mailing list.

A developer list is also available. This is where discussions take place relating to possible improvements for Yacas.

Credits

Ayal Pinkus
This project was started by Ayal Pinkus who remains the main author and the primary maintainer.
John Lapeyre
made some modifications to the make file, and improved some math code.
Juan Pablo
reported many bugs, made many suggestions for improvements, and supplied improved code (yacas scripts and makefile code).
Doreen Pinkus
designed this Web site for Yacas.
Igor Khavkine
added 'Diverge' and 'Curl', and implemented threading for the derivative operator (the gradient). Fixed GMP code.
James Gilbertson
Win32 port, improved error reporting. Added initial version of Karatsuba multiplication, and added some matrix functions to the math library.
Daniel Richard G.
added autoconf/automake scripts, made Sun/Sgi compilation possible, created a rpm spec file, many many many changes to clean up the source distribution.
Ladislav Zejda
supplied patches to make Yacas work on Dec Alpha's.
Fred Bacon
fixed some compiler errors on the newer gcc compiles. Reported some important bugs.
Schneelocke
reported an important bug in numeric calculations.
Serge Winitzki
added factorials over rationals, TeXForm, did a major overhaul of the introduction manual (actually, he wrote large part of the manual as it is), and initiated numerous improvements and test code for Yacas, and implemented yacas_client. Actually, Serge has been one of the larger contributors, and the main force behind the improved documentation.
Jay Belanger
reported some bugs, and improved some of the GnuPlot code. He also wrote the yacas.el file, which allows you to run yacas from within emacs. His most recent version can be found here
Gopal Narayanan
maintains the Debian package for Yacas.
Vladimir Livshits
set up the initial sourceforge CVS repository, and updated the Windows version source code. He also greatly improved the logic theorem prover code.
Eugenia Loli
Helped build the BeOS version of Yacas. It can be found here
Saverio Prinz
built a fantastic Mac version of Yacas. It can be found here
John Fremlin
Added some code for fast calculation of roots of a cubic polynomial.
Mark Arrasmith
Helped greatly in setting up the fltk-based graphicaluser interface, and fixed some bugs relating to limits regarding infinity.
Robert V Schipper
Ironed out a few bugs in Yacas.
Gopal Narayanan
Debian package maintainer. Made a man page for Yacas.
Christian Obrecht
Made a much better Limit, and made Yacas behave better at infinity.
Jitse Niesen
Reported some bugs, helped improve various parts of Yacas, and greatly improved the manual for Yacas.
Pablo Di Napoli
Fixed the configure script so Yacas compiles under cygwin.
Joris van der Hoeven
Helped with texmacs support.
Alberto González Palomo
Implemented a console-mode version of Yacas for AgendaVR. Changed the directory structure for the script files, and implemented initial support for OpenMath.
Jonathan Leto
Helped improve the integration algorithm, and helped extend the tests used for Yacas (finding numerous bugs).
Andrei Zorine
Started the body of statistics code.
Daniel Rigby
Brought a client-server structure to the EPOC32 version of Yacas.
Dirk Reusch
Added some linear algebra functions, and fixed some predicate functions.
Mark Hatsell
made the server code work on Windows.
Yannick Versley
sent some patches regarding bugs relating integration and differentiation.
Franz Hack
Supplied a Delphi interface to the Yacas DLL.
Mike Pinna
Applied some bug fixes.
Sebastian Ferraro
Reported bugs and supplied improved code (determinants)
Roberto Colistete Junior
Is maintaining a version of Yacas for SymbianOS.


  started by Ayal Pinkus, © 1999