## Convincing maple to solve an ODE with Neumann conditions at a symbolic valued location

I can use maple to solve a 1D second-order ODE with Dirichlet boundary conditions at symbolic-valued locations:

# Z'' = 0, Z(a)=0, Z(b) = 1
dsolve({diff(Z(r),r,r) = 0,Z(a)=0,Z(b)=1});


This correctly returns

                  r       a
Z(r) = - ----- + -----
a - b   a - b


I can also easily convince maple to solve this ODE with some Neumann (normal derivative) boundary conditions at at fixed-value, numeric location:

# Z'' = 0, Z(a) = 1, Z'(0) = 0
dsolve({diff(Z(r),r,r) = 0,Z(a)=1,eval(diff(Z(r),r),r=0)=0});


produces

                 Z(r) = 1


But if I try naively to use a Neumann condition at a symbolic value location

# Z'' = 0, Z(a) = 1, Z'(b) = 0
dsolve({diff(Z(r),r,r) = 0,Z(a)=1,eval(diff(Z(r),r),r=b)=0});


then I get an error:

Error, (in dsolve) found differentiated functions with same name but depending on different arguments in the given DE system: {Z(b), Z(r)}


After a long hunt, I found the solution. dsolve takes an optional second argument that can tell it what the dependent variable actually is. So the correct call is:

# Z'' = 0, Z(a) = 1, Z'(b) = 0
dsolve({diff(Z(r),r,r) = 0,Z(a)=1,eval(diff(Z(r),r),r=b)=0});


and this gives the correct answer

                 Z(r) = 1


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