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Questions tagged [built-in-symbols]

Questions related to handling built-in symbols and functions, for example why they behave a certain (possibly unexpected) way.

Symbols are the basic named objects in Mathematica, and Mathematica comes with thousands of built-in symbols.

They may represent

  • functions (e.g. Plot, Exp);
  • constants (e.g. Pi, GoldenRatio, True);
  • (inert) names (option names like Method, AspectRatio; other names like $Failed);
  • function-like objects that do not evaluate to other expressions but derive their meaning from their Attributes (e.g. Hold) or how they are used by other parts of the system (e.g. RGBColor, Dynamic, C, K).

Some care should be exercised in using this tag, since nearly all questions will be about at least one built-in symbol. When the question is not about how to get a certain computation done but about how a certain symbol works, consider using this tag. A counterpart to this tag is the tag (q.v.), which should be used when the question is about the undocumented behavior of a symbol.

All of the system symbols may be listed with Names:

systemsymbols = Names["System`*"]; (* a very long list *)

Information about a symbol may be obtained with Information (?):

? Plot

There are also other contexts and packages built into Mathematica.

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How to find language changes that were not included in the official change log

A change log is issued when Mathematica has an update, such as: 10.4 10.3 10.2 But for instance the PlotLabels option mentioned in this post is not in the log. And as far as I know, the ImageMarker or some other [[EXPERIMENTAL]] functions are…
yode
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Who or what is named character Andy?

I suspect \[Andy] was meant to represent a staff member, or at least a person of importance. I tried the F1-"Wolfram Search", Wolfram|Alpha and a simple mathematica.SE & Google search. Can somebody please tell me why \[Andy] is a named character in…
Kevin Groenke
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Builder pattern for complex objects construction

Intro I was watching "UnRisk-Q Instrument Builder" talk (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xx3goIBpOdE) and those guys use builder pattern to build complex objects like this: bondBuilder = BondBuilder[] bond = bondBuilder @ Nominale[1.] @…
mikea
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How to judge the function is kernel function or not in program method?

I found the behavoir have changed. All symbol in System` is kernel funtion(include those your custom funtion) System`Private`HasAnyCodesQ[Plot] True If you run <
yode
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Wrap angle to [0,2pi[

Is there any built-in Mathematica function that wraps any angle in rad to the $[0,2\pi]$ domain? So, for example: wrapTo2pi[9Pi/4]=Pi/4 I know such function exists in Matlab. Extend: how to wrap any number to a given domain? like wrap A into…
AJHC
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From built-in symbols to algebraic representation

If I have an expression with Mathematica's built-in functions like Probability[x > 0, x \[Distributed] UniformDistribution[{-1, 1}]] its algebraic representation would be something like Integrate[PDF[UniformDistribution[{-1, 1}], x], {x, 0,…
Gleb
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ContinuousMarkovProcess built-in function

Is the built-in function ContinuousMarkovProcess in Mathematica is the well-known Gillespie algorithm?
David
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How to find the list of all the elementary functions in mathematica?

Is there any command to give me the list of all the embedded elementary functions in Mathematica like Cos Sin Cosh Sinh Log and so on?
user49047
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What does the $ sign do?

I saw this uses $, but it was not clear what does it do there. Table[Image3D@ Array[Boole@ FreeQ[Plus @@ Mod[PadLeft@IntegerDigits[{##} - 1, 3], 2, 1], $ | ## & @@ s] &, {3, 3, 3}^3], {s, Subsets@{3, 4, 5,…
Chen Stats Yu
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Define Tilde as a postfix operator

I have read a lot of posts in this forum on defining infix symbols like CircleDot and Tilde. The Help pages say Tilde is often used either as an infix or postfix operator, but I can find no example in the Mathematica documentation nor in this forum…
matrixbud
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Understanding the behaviour of CrossingDetect on lists

Consider the first example in the documentation of CrossingDetect: CrossingDetect[{4, 0, 1, -2, 1, -2, -3, -1, 3}] // Normal Let's plot the list: ListLinePlot[{4, 0, 1, -2, 1, -2, -3, -1, 3}] The red line obviously crosses (strictly!) the…
anderstood
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Mathematica built-in function that translates number strings to numbers

I recently ran across a function in mathematica that translates "twenty-two" to 22, but I can not remember what it is and my searching through the help functions has yielded nothing. Can anybody help?
Michael Stern
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Upgrade a built-in function: Nearest (mimic the behavior of V. 10.1 in previous versions)

For versions prior to 10.1 the following returns a error message timedat = {1.1, 2, 3.3}; equalTime = {1, 2, 3}; Flatten@Nearest[timedat, equalTime] Nearest::dmtch: The dimension of {1.1,2,3.3} and {1,2,3} does not match. >> A workaround is…
Dimitris
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Using and extending Mathematica's built in "$" constants

I find that Mathematica's status-indication constants like $Failed, $Aborted, and $TimedOut are very useful, and would like to use them in my own code. Sometimes I'm tempted to create my own when developing packages, but that create context issues…
ibeatty
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CountryData and RailwayGaugeLengths

Looking to see how to extract out just the length for this search: formerSovietUnion = {"Armenia", "Azerbaijan", "Belarus", "Estonia", "Georgia", "Kazakhstan", "Kyrgyzstan", "Latvia", "Lithuania", "Moldova", "Russia", "Tajikistan", "Turkmenistan",…
gotwals
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