Output

SHASTA uses two different sorts of output:

• The information output consists of the startup banner, the input prompts, and the execution and garbage collection times of each command. This output is sent to stderr and cannot be rerouted, but it can be completely turned off with the -q (quiet) command line option.
• The mathematical output, which is sent to stdout and can be rerouted to a file, contains only the results of specific output commands. Unlike most systems, SHASTA does not write out automatically the results of its computations, so you must ensure that each result is assigned to a variable or it is lost forever. To send an expression to the mathematical output, use the command fmt(expr) where expr is the expression to write out and fmt is one of axiom, lisp, maple or tex. Note that you can mix various output formats in the same session, and that the output format is independent of the selected input format. The axiom, lisp and maple commands produce valid inputs for the corresponding systems, while tex produces L^ATEX input. The tex command makes absolutely no attempt at line-breaking or at generating nice-looking output, so consider what it produces as a file to be edited by hand. You may be better off producing ouput for another computer algebra system and using that system to produce decent TEX code.

This combination of two output streams allows you to create input files for other computer algebra systems by rerouting stdout to a file, while still using SHASTA interactively: just use the fmt command on the results that you want to save in the input file.