Needed, symbolic math in Python

[Raymond L. Buvel]

Paul Rubin wrote:

> I wonder if anyone can recommend any simple symbolic algebra modules
> in Python.  I just need to do some straightforward polynomial
> arithmetic, no fancy calculus or special functions anything like that.
> But I do need arbitrary precision rational coefficients in the
> polynomials.  Thanks.

At one time, there was a project to interface Python to GiNaC but I haven't
seen anything lately.  For what you want to do, you night be able to get
away with sending text strings to the GiNaC shell and processing the result
in Python.  There are also other free computer algebra packages available. 
Maxima and Yacas come to mind.  All of these are available in Debian
testing.  If you are using some other system, I recommend searching Google
to find the projects.

It might be just as easy to create an extension module to get GiNaC to do
what you want.

Ray Buvel