Maple computer algebra system

Categories: Domain-specific programming languages | Computer algebra systems | Numerical programming languages

Image:Maple95 screenshot.png
Maple 9.5 interface

Maple is a general-purpose commercial computer algebra system. It was first developed in 1981 by the Symbolic Computation Group at the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.

Since 1988, it has been developed and sold commercially by Waterloo Maple Inc. (also known as Maplesoft), a Canadian company also based in Waterloo, Ontario. The current version is Maple 10.

Contents

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Introduction

Maple is an interpreted, dynamically typed programming language. As is usual with computer algebra systems, symbolic expressions are stored in memory as directed acyclic graphs.

Since Maple 6 the language has permitted lexically-scoped variables.

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Example Maple code

The following code computes an exact solution to the linear ordinary differential equation

<math>\frac{d^2y}{dx^2}(x) - 3 y(x) = x</math>

subject to initial conditions: 

dsolve( {diff(y(x),x,x) - 3*y(x) = x, y(0)=1, D(y)(0)=2}, y(x) );
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Past releases

  • Maple 10: May 10, 2005.
  • Maple 9.5: April 15, 2004.
  • Maple 9: June 30, 2003.
  • Maple 8: April 16, 2002.
  • Maple 7: July 1, 2001.
  • Maple 6: December 6, 1999.
  • Maple V R5: November 1, 1997.
  • Maple V R4: Nov 19, 1996 ??.
  • Maple V R3: March 15, 1994.
  • Maple V R2: 1992
  • Maple V: 1991
  • Maple 4.3: 1990
  • Maple 4.2: ??
  • Maple 4.1: ??
  • Maple 4.0: 1985
  • Maple 3.3: 1985 (first publicly available version)
  • Maple 3.2: ??
  • Maple 3.1: ??
  • Maple 3.0: ??
  • Maple 2.2: ??
  • Maple 2.1: ??
  • Maple 2.0: ??
  • Maple 1.1: ??
  • Maple 1.0: December, 1979
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Versions available

Maplesoft sells both student and professional editions of Maple, with a substantial difference in price (e.g., US$99 compared to US$1,995.00, respectively).

Recent student editions (from version 6 onwards) have not placed computational limitations but rather come with less printed documentation. This is similar to the difference between Mathematica's student and professional editions.

In releases prior to version 6, the student edition has had the following computational limitations:

  • A maximum of 100 in floating point digits for computations and display.
  • A maximum size of 8000 (in machine words or objects contained) for any algebraic object.
  • A maximum of 3 dimensions for arrays.
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See also

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External link

fr:Maple he:Maple lt:Maple nl:Maple pl:Maple pt:Maple sv:Maple zh:MAPLE