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YACAS is an easy to use, general purpose Computer Algebra System, a program for symbolic manipulation of mathematical expressions. It uses its own programming language designed for symbolic as well as arbitrary-precision numerical computations.

The system has a library of scripts that implement many of the symbolic algebra operations; new algorithms can be easily added to the library. YACAS comes with extensive documentation (hundreds of pages) covering the scripting language, the functionality that is already implemented in the system, and the algorithms we used.

Introduction to Yacas: tutorial and examples

Yacas allows you to do calculations, and can be used directly inside your browser. Above you should see the Yacas calculation center, with a text in blue stating "Click here to enter an expression". After tapping in that area, that text should be replaced with In>. You can type an expression to be executed here. If you don't know what to type don't worry, that is what this tutorial is for.

In this tutorial you will also see highlighted underlined text. Clicking on it invokes a calculation. For example, to get the result of adding one to one, you could click here: 1+1 (The calculation might take a few seconds the first time you click). Below in the calculation box you will then see In> 1+1 and a line following it with Out> 2. You can (and usually will) type it in manually in the calculation environment, but in this tutorial you can click on the links to perform the action. The above is obviously a simple example, but Yacas is capable of doing calculations that are a lot more complex. This tutorial should get you started in a few hours.

The Yacas syntax

Syntax is very important. It helps you read code or expressions, and sometimes even guides the way you think about a problem.