Built on powerful and elegant long-standing principles, the core Mathematica language has been gradually enhanced under tight control over its twenty-year history. Version 6.0 added convenient new list manipulation functions and enhanced pattern matching and options handling, as well as a major new integrated debugging and code analysis system.

New in List Manipulation »

Span (;;) — new notation for sequences of parts, blocks, etc.

Accumulate  ▪  Tally  ▪  Riffle  ▪  TakeWhile  ▪  ArrayFlatten  ▪  Band  ▪  ...

ReplacePart (modified) — now supports general sparse rule specification

New Pattern Constructs

Longest  ▪  Shortest  ▪  PatternSequence  ▪  Repeated (modified)

New System for Function Options

OptionValue  ▪  OptionsPattern  ▪  FilterRules

New in Program Development

Debugger — full interactive debugging and code analysis environment

Quiet  ▪  Monitor  ▪  PrintTemporary  ▪  SyntaxInformation

New ▶ Package (.m) — special notebook editor for package files, with function indices

New in String Manipulation

Nearest  ▪  Hash  ▪  EditDistance  ▪  DictionaryLookup  ▪  DatePattern

Other New Functions

Dynamic  ▪  RandomChoice  ▪  IntegerString  ▪  DateString  ▪  SystemOptions

Table, Do, ... (modified) — now support iteration over explicit lists

TreeForm (modified) — graphical display of the tree structure of an expression