On Sat, Aug 22, 2009 at 3:02 PM, Simon King <[email protected]> wrote:

>
> Hi Sebastian,
>
> On 22 Aug., 23:46, Sebastian Pancratz <[email protected]> wrote:
> [...]
> > I think I'd prefer the other suggestion, namely leaving the default
> > behaviour of methods like "is_field" as it is at the moment (thereby
> > not breaking any other code!) and introducing an optional argument to
> > specifically suit the typical use case.
>
> ... and also with the possibility to assert properties such as being
> field, being commutative, being integrally closed?


Yes that would be very very nice indeed.  And I think it shouldn't stop one
from even changing something. E.g., it is fun to make elliptic curves over
Z/nZ with n composite, and currently I do this by changing the is_field
method

  R.is_field = lambda : True

but it would be better to make it possible to correctly just say --
henceforth pretend R is a field.


> Thank you for working on it!


Yes, many thanks!

William


>
>
> Best regards,
> Simon
> >
>


-- 
William Stein
Associate Professor of Mathematics
University of Washington
http://wstein.org

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