code issue

[Rob_Holman]

Hi folks:

I'm working on a bit of code in which I want the students to choose a trig function from a drop-down menu, and then from there have some choices for viewing the graph. All is working fine except for one thing. There are a couple of constants that depend on the function they choose from the menu, and I'm trying to define the constant based on their choice for f. The basic issue I'm having boils down to the following question:

Why doesn't this code return a 2?

m = Cos;
Which[m == Sin, 5, m == Cos, 2]

Thanks for the help!

Rob

[Michael_Rogers]

Try

Code: Select all

m = Cos;
Which[m === Sin, 5, m === Cos, 2]

The expression Cos == Sin remains unevaluated (in the first test), which according to the documentation on 'Which' http://reference.wolfram.com/mathematica/ref/Which.html?q=Which means the 'Which' statement will remain unevaluated. 'SameQ' (===) always returns 'True' or 'False'.

'Equal' (==) is a funny function. 'Cos == Cos' return 'True" because they're identical. But 'Equal' won't return 'False' unless the two sides are unequal numbers or "raw data" (see http://reference.wolfram.com/mathematica/ref/Equal.html?q=Equal).