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[CALL] Most common pitfalls for beginners of Wolfram Language

Wolfram Language (WL) is a powerful multi-paradigm programing language. There is a set of common mistakes that repeatedly tend to entrap new users. This is a call to describe such mistakes building a "black-listing" guide for novice coders. Please consider contributing. I suggest following simple rules (with gratitude adapted from a similar effort):

  • One topic per answer

  • Focus on non-advanced uses (it is intended to be useful for beginners and as a question closing reference)

  • Include a self explanatory title in header style (example: "# Basic built-in function syntax"; see syntax guide )

  • Explain the symptoms, the mechanism behind the scenes and all possible causes and solutions you can think of. Be sure to include a beginner's level explanation (and a more advance one too, if you can)

Please, use "Reply" to a specific comment for structured clarity of nested comments.


Table of Contents

POSTED BY: Vitaliy Kaurov
22 Replies
Posted 4 years ago
POSTED BY: Mark Bourland
Posted 4 years ago

Differences between "Equal" and "SameQ"


There are different ways of comparing two elements or more, the first one is less strict: using Equal (==); the second one, is more strict: using SameQ (===).

Let's take a look at the documentation page for Equal:

Equal Documentation Page

And now, the documentation page for SameQ...

SameQ Documentation Page

This alone doesn't tell much, but how exactly these two operators (== and ===) are different? The difference lies in their individual strictness.

If you want to compare numbers AND their types, use SameQ, if you want less strict comparisons, use Equal.

Equals vs SameQ

Sometimes, Equal outputs a symbolic equation, and that can be bad sometimes, if you want to ALWAYS output a boolean value, use SameQ.

Equal Symbolic vs SameQ Boolean

WARNING: SameQ has a higher precedence as an operator. If you want to replace values, replace the values while holding the operation.

SameQ precedes Equal

POSTED BY: Pedro Cabral

Don't perform operations on whole arrays by indexing individual elements....

Horrible:
output = ConstantArray[0, Length[data]]; 
For[j = 1, j <= Length[data], j++, output[[j]] = Sin[data[[j]]]];
output

Bad:
Table[Sin[data[[j]]], {j, 1, Length[data]}]

Nice:
Map[Sin, data]

And if the operation is Listable... Best: Sin[data]

POSTED BY: Jon McLoone
POSTED BY: Sander Huisman

Subscripted variables are a pain...use [i] indexing instead.

POSTED BY: Yaroslav Bulatov
Attachments:
POSTED BY: Raspi Rascal
Posted 9 years ago

Import and "CurrencyTokens"

Perhaps not 'common' but I was bitten by it twice until I made it 'my' default for data import. I assume for some legacy reason the stripping of currency symbols is the default behavior of the Import[] function. Seems an odd default behavior to me and worse the default behavior is not pointed out as boldly as I think it should be in the documentation.

Import[   , "CurrencyTokens" -> None]

Incorrect Import

Correct Import

POSTED BY: David Proffer
POSTED BY: Neil Singer
POSTED BY: Aeyoss Antelope

Consider Reap/Sow Instead of AppendTo

When using the output of a program to build large lists, a combination of Reap and Sow is often cited as the most efficient (computationally speaking) approach. Put simply, AppendTo trades speed in favour of flexibility by creating a copy of the original list when called. Indeed, Reap/Sow is also point 7 of 10 Tips For Writing Fast Mathematica Code.

I remember first seeing Reap/Sow as a beginner and feeling like it was an 'advanced' feature for other users. Instead I fell into the pattern of defining an empty list and using AppendTo which in hindsight was a beginner's mistake I frequently made by the justification given above.

The example from the link above says it best:

In[7]:= data = {}; 
 Do[AppendTo[data, RandomReal[x]], {x, 0, 40000}]; // AbsoluteTiming

Out[7]= {11.6127, Null}

In[8]:= data = 
   Reap[Do[Sow[RandomReal[x]], {x, 0, 40000}]][[2]]; // AbsoluteTiming

Out[8]= {0.164533, Null}

This is one small change which will Reap large benefits for any beginner.

POSTED BY: Benjamin Goodman
POSTED BY: Michael Rogers
POSTED BY: Sander Huisman
POSTED BY: Raspi Rascal

Thanks, had added a previous version of ApplyTo, now fixed, and also added [Application]. (https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/Application.html)

POSTED BY: Sander Huisman
POSTED BY: Raspi Rascal

Also added this explicitly. thanks!

POSTED BY: Sander Huisman

For some reason the following code is not working for me: ?5.5?=Missing["UnknownSymbol", "5.5?"] Has the floor function syntax been updated?

POSTED BY: Peter Burbery
Posted 4 years ago

Not sure how you are entering the left and right floor brackets but that is the problem,

\[LeftFloor]5.5\[RightFloor]
(* 5 *)

To enter from the keyboard esclfesc and escrfesc where esc is escape.

POSTED BY: Rohit Namjoshi

The forum screwed up some of the symbols and replaced them with ?. Now fixed.

POSTED BY: Sander Huisman
POSTED BY: Sander Huisman
POSTED BY: Patrick Scheibe

Basic syntax of built-in functions

  • All built-in functions start from capital letters and are in CamelCase for compound names. Users of many other programming languages might miss this as they are used to different conventions. Examples: Plot, ListPlot, FindSpanningTree, etc.

  • Arguments of a function are inclosed in square brackets. Round parenthesis are used only for ordering of operations. Again, other languages use different conventions. Examples:

    • Cos[Pi] --- is a function with a single argument Pi.
    • BesselJ[1/2, 5] --- is a function with 2 arguments
    • (2-Cos[Pi])Sin[Pi/3] --- round parenthesis are used to order operations
POSTED BY: Marina Shchitova
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