The authors’ Environment for Scientific Computing (ESC) contains the ingredients mentioned in the paper’s title. The basic system is the vector-manipulation language APL. Symbol manipulation was originally provided by REDUCE. Current versions of the environment use muMATH and MACSYMA, but a Mathematica environment is anticipated. The numerical software is obtained through calls to either FORTRAN libraries such as IMSL, LINPACK, and ESSL, or the Turbo Pascal Numerical Recipes collection of routines. Graphics capabilities are obtained through a link to  DISSPLA  and through the authors’ MATGR2D and MATGR3D workspaces.

The authors describe the various issues of interfacing among the component systems of the ESC environment. In addition, they provide several examples of both numerical and symbolic manipulation. The paper and the environment will both be of interest to several communities: APL users, practitioners of numerical methods, and students of symbolic and algebraic manipulation.

The physical presentation of this paper lacks some polish. It includes just one numbered subsection; the others are titled, but not numbered. Also, the bibliography does not include any authors’ first names.