Question

I invoked Maxima tex1 from within a batch script as follows:

maxima --very-quiet -r "tex1(solve(8*x^2+7*x+5));" | grep -v false > output.txt

and I got the output.txt as follows:

 \left[ x=-{{\sqrt{111}\,i+7}\over{16}} , x={{\sqrt{111}\,i-7}\over{16}} \righ\
t] 

that is not valid as a (La)TeX input file.

How to prevent Maxima tex1 from wrapping its output?

Answer 1

This is, unfortunately, hard coded into Maxima. A way to solve this problem is to edit the function myprinc located in the file maxima/src/mactex.lisp. There is a cond form that has a 70. written there, it should read linel instead of 70. If you recompile maxima after making this change then the following will work:

maxima --very-quiet -r "linel: 1000$ tex1(solve(8*x^2+7*x+5));" | grep -v false > output.txt

Anyway, I’ll send a patch to the Maxima list ASAP so that future versions of the program won’t have this shortcoming.