Learning Guide Learning Guide

7 Input and OutputYou can do much of your work directly within Maple’s worksheets. Youcan perform calculations, plot functions, and document the results. However,at some point you may need to import data or export results to a fileto interact with another person or piece of software. The data could bemeasurements from scientific experiments or numbers generated by otherprograms. Once you import the data into Maple, you can use Maple’splotting capabilities to visualize the results, and its algebraic capabilitiesto construct or investigate an associated mathematical model.Maple provides a number of convenient ways to both import and exportraw numerical data and graphics. It presents individual algebraicand numeric results in formats suitable for use in FORTRAN, C, or themathematical typesetting system L A TEX. You can even export the entireworksheet as a text file (for inclusion in electronic mail), a L A TEX document,HTML, RTF, or XML. You can cut and paste results, and exporteither single expressions or entire worksheets.This chapter discusses the most common aspects of exporting andimporting information to and from files. It introduces how Maple interactswith the file system on your computer, and how Maple can begininteracting with other software.7.1 Reading FilesThe two most common reasons to read files are to obtain data and toretrieve Maple commands stored in a text file.The first case is often concerned with data generated from an experiment.You can store numbers separated by white space and line breaks in atext file, then read them into Maple for study. You can most easily accomplishthese operations by using Maple’s ExportMatrix and ImportMatrixcommands, respectively.269