Is it possible for all calculations in the expression for numbers in a power to be prevented? Perhaps by pre-processing the expression or adding tellsimp rules? Or some other way?
For example, to
distrib (10 ^ 10 * (x + 1));
which produces:
1000000000 x + 1000000000
instead issued:
10 ^ 10 * x + 10 ^ 10
And similarly
factor (10 ^ 10 * x + 10 ^ 10);
returned:
10 ^ 10 * (x + 1);
Just as
factor(200);
2^3*5^2
represents power of numbers, only permanently?
Interesting question, although I don't see a good solution. Here's something I tried as an experiment, which is to display integers in factored form. I am working with Maxima 5.44.0 + SBCL.
(%i1) :lisp (defun integer-formatter (x) ($factor x))
INTEGER-FORMATTER
(%i1) :lisp (setf (get 'integer 'formatter) 'integer-formatter)
INTEGER-FORMATTER
(%i1) (x + 1000)^3;
3 3 3
(%o1) (x + 2 5 )
(%i2) 10^10*(x + 1);
2 5 2 5
(%o2) (2 5 ) (x + 1)
This is only a modification of the display; the internal representation is just a single integer.
(%i3) :lisp $%
((MTIMES SIMP) 10000000000 ((MPLUS SIMP) 1 $X))
That seems kind of clumsy, since e.g. 2^(2*5)*5^(2*5) isn't really more comprehensible than 10000000000.
A separate question is whether the arithmetic on 10^10 could be suppressed, so it actually stays as 10^10 and isn't represented internally as 10000000000. I'm pretty sure that would be difficult. Unfortunately Maxima is not too good with retracting identities which are applied, particularly with the built-in identities which are applied to perform arithmetic and other operations.
