On 2015-03-09, John Cremona <[email protected]> wrote:
> On 9 March 2015 at 10:31, Dima Pasechnik <[email protected]> wrote:
>> On 2015-03-09, John Cremona <[email protected]> wrote:
>>> In preparing an example for a course I discovered this seriously
>>> misleading feature:
>>>
>>> sage: n=(10^19-1)/9
>>> sage: n.factor()
>>> 1111111111111111111
>>> sage: n.is_prime()
>>> False
>>> sage: ZZ(n).is_prime()
>>> True
>>>
>>> What is happening is that when I defined n I used / so that I defined
>>> a rational number.  And in QQ, there are no primes.
>>>
>>> sage: n = (10^19-1)//9
>>> sage: n.is_prime()
>>> True
>>>
>>> I don't think there is a good solution for this but surely it will
>>> cause confusion (it confused me for at least 5 minutes).
>>
>> I don't even see the meaning of QQ(n).factor()
>> (Prime) factoring in a field is meaningless, IMHO...
>
> Come on, be realistic!  If the firls is the field of fractions of a
> UFD then tere is a very well-defined notion of factorization, which is
> useful. 
 
well, OK, but factor() is not defined for GFs, CC, RR, AA...
Why for QQ (and at least some NF, in fact, too) then?
IMHO it's a bug, no?

On the other hand is_prime() is defined for 
GFs, CC, RR, AA, QQ, (some) NFs.
Should this be considered a bug too?

Dima

> I used to get very frustrated with Magma when I asked to
> factor the discriminant of an elliptic curve over QQ -- something one
> needs to do a lot! -- and it refused because the integral discriminant
> had QQ as parent.
>
> In any case, I was just sending out a warning, as this will confuse students:
>
> sage: n = 10/2
> sage: n
> 5
> sage: n.is_prime()
> False
>
> John

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