Hello, My argument against making the 'name' argument for FiniteField optional was that it hides the fact that the generator of a finite field is not canonical. On the other hand, once an algebraic closure of GF(p) has been fixed, there is a unique subfield of p^n elements for every n. Hence I would like to propose that if the user does not specify a name, then the constructor should return the unique subfield of the relevant degree inside the chosen algebraic closure. In other words, for all n > 1 we should have
GF(p, n) = GF(p^n) = GF(p).algebraic_closure().subfield(n)[0] With this convention, an added benefit is that the distinguished generator of GF(p, n) is called 'z' + str(n), which is less likely to be confusing than just 'z'. For example: sage: GF(3).algebraic_closure().subfield(5)[0] Finite Field in z5 of size 3^5 Peter Op dinsdag 30 december 2014 10:49:15 UTC+1 schreef Jean-Pierre Flori: > > I would also be nice to be able to pass GF(3,3). > If I ever find some time to implement it, I'll do it, but anyone can feel > free to do it before I do. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sage-devel" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
