Wang, Kek-Wan2024-08-152024-08-1519761976https://hdl.handle.net/1828/20044The goal of this thesis is the design and implementation of a computer program capable of computing symbolic derivatives and indefinite integrals. The program must be suitable for implementation on the University of Victoria IBM 370/145 computer with the VS-1 operating system. In particular, the program is required to satisfy both of the following conditions: (a) It should be able to solve a differentiation problem or an integration problem using less than 1 minute of CPU time and less than 256K bytes of main storage when run on the university computer. (b) Its design should make it suitable f or use as a teaching tool in a typica l first year calculus class. The program, SYMDIP (symbolic differentiation and integration package), meets all of these basic design goals. Tests using a set of 30 problems taken from the 1975-76 fall and spring examination papers for Mathematics 130 show that all but one of these 30 problems can be successfully solved by the program. To illustrate that the package is capable of solving many problems which are beyond the capabilities of a first year student, a set of 18 more complicated differentiation and integration problems are also solved by SYMDIP. The user states his problem in a simple and natural way as follows: DIFFERENTIATE "function" WITH RESPECT TO "variable" or INTEGRATE "function" WITH RESPECT TO "variable". "Function" is the function to be differentiated or integrated and it is written using the FORTRAN notation. "Variable" is any single alphabetic character of the user's choice. The complete program is composed of 3 separate job steps the analyzer, the processor, and the writer. These job steps are named in accordance with their respective functions within the package. The analyzer and the writer are written in the SNOBOL4 language while the main body of the program, the processor, is written using the algebraic programming language ALTRAN. Because SYMDIP requires 354K bytes of main storage space for execution, an overlay structure is constructed to be used with the program. Storage requirements of SYMDIP are reduced to 256K bytes of main memory in this way. Design of this structure i s complicated by the relatively large number (approximately 300) of subprocedures involved. The average user is completely unaware of both the overlay structure and the separate job steps because he activates ~1e package using a simple catalogued procedure.231 pagesAvailable to the World Wide WebThesis