You could solve for a, b, c, d and then ignore c and d.
sage: a, b, c, d = var('a b c d')
sage: solns = solve([a + b - 1, a - b, c + d], [a, b, c, d]); solns
[[a == (1/2), b == (1/2), c == -r1, d == r1]]
sage: [s[:2] for s in solns]
[[a == (1/2), b == (1/2)]]
Or you can tweak solve to only use the equations which involve the variables
that you want to solve for.
sage: def smart_solve(eqns, vars):
....: return solve([eqn for eqn in eqns if
....: any(v in eqn.variables() for v in vars)], vars)
....:
sage: smart_solve([a + b - 1, a - b, c + d], [a, b])
[[a == (1/2), b == (1/2)]]
I don't know what would be the pros and cons of having Sage's solve behave
in this way (either by default or as an option).
Thank you, I kind of went the "smart_solve" way, it just meant yet another iteration of ifs and fors in my application which I'd have liked to avoid. I had expected "solve" to be a bit smarter by itself but perhaps there would be too many implications if you'd expect a full test for solvability. Perhaps an error would be better instead of an empty solution though.
Excess variables are interpreted as parameters, and only solutions that are valid for all values of the parameters are sought. This explains the empty list in the second case.
Asked: 2013-04-15 09:54:19 +0100
Seen: 550 times
Last updated: Aug 07 '20
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