request: ^ and constant searching

[franktaw at netscape.net]

Specifying the starting term would be more useful if the starting term was defined more consistently.  For example, looking at kth powers, the squares, cubes, and 5th powers have a leading zero; the other powers do not (except k=1, where A001477 has the leading zero and A000012 does not).
 
I don't really see how this would help searching for sequences differing only in the initial term(s), unless you know exactly which variation you are looking for.  To see if another sequence is similar, grab several terms starting at the fifth or so, and search for that.
 
The second suggestion seems more useful to me.  However, care should be taken; decimal strings can occur in text as well, and we don't want to lose the ability to search for them.  I would suggest using a unique prefix (perhaps cons:) if this feature is supported.
 
Franklin T. Adams-Watters
 
-----Original Message-----
From: Eric W. Weisstein eric at weisstein.com


Two OEIS search features that would be particularly useful to me would be: 
 
(1) The ability to search for sequences starting with a given term, e.g., "^2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9" finds only sequences whose initial term is 2 (this would be very handy for locating similar sequences that differ only in the first term or two, a process that is otherwise quite painful as far as I've been able to tell) 
 
(2) The automatic interpretation of a decimal number as a sequence of digits, e.g, "1.618033" automatically searches for "{1,6,1,8,0,3,3}}. This would save me quite a bit of "decimal removal and comma insertion" :) The automatic formatting of cons sequences is quite nice; it would be nice to be able to go the other way as well. 
 
I have no idea how difficult these might be to implement. But I at least would find them very useful. 
 
Cheers, 
-Eric 
___________________________________________________
Try the New Netscape Mail Today!
Virtually Spam-Free | More Storage | Import Your Contact List
http://mail.netscape.com
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://list.seqfan.eu/pipermail/seqfan/attachments/20060421/0efd82d8/attachment-0001.htm>