Maxima - what is "expt"?

Question

I have been recently using Maxima (instead of Maple) and I obtained a weird symbol for which I didn't manage to get information.

Here is the code :

gx(t):=p0x*(1-t)^3+p1x*t*(1-t)^2+p2x*(1-t)*t^2+p3x*t^3;
dgx:diff(gx(t),t);
gy(t):=p0y*(1-t)^3+p1y*t*(1-t)^2+p2y*(1-t)*t^2+p3y*t^3;
dgy:diff(gy(t),t);
det(ax,ay,bx,by):=ax*by-ay*bx;
v(x,y):=-1/(R-sqrt(x**2+y**2))*[x,y];
f(t) := det(subst(N*t-j+1,t,dgx),subst(N*t-j+1,t,dgy),v(gx(N*t-j+1),gy(N*t-j+1))[1],v(gx(N*t-j+1),gy(N*t-j+1))[2])^2;

Now for the output corresponding to f(t), the "expt(...)" symbol appears.

If anyone has got any idea, I would greatly appreciate. Thank you.

Answer 1

From the manual:

If an exponential expression is too wide to be displayed as a^b it appears as expt (a, b)