Re: [sage-devel] GF(16,'x') when we do not care about the 'x'

2016-01-21 Thread Jean-Pierre Flori
On Thursday, January 21, 2016 at 3:26:55 AM UTC+1, William wrote: > > On Wed, Jan 20, 2016 at 6:20 PM, William Stein > wrote: > > Nils -- many thanks for your post explaining the longterm perspective > > and underlying reasons why things are the way they are. > > > > I mentioned this thread

Re: [sage-devel] GF(16,'x') when we do not care about the 'x'

2016-01-20 Thread William Stein
On Wed, Jan 20, 2016 at 6:20 PM, William Stein wrote: > Nils -- many thanks for your post explaining the longterm perspective > and underlying reasons why things are the way they are. > > I mentioned this thread in my class today, which happened to be on > constructing finite fields in Sage: > >

Re: [sage-devel] GF(16,'x') when we do not care about the 'x'

2016-01-20 Thread David Roe
On Wed, Jan 20, 2016 at 7:47 PM, Nils Bruin wrote: > On Wednesday, January 20, 2016 at 3:22:54 PM UTC-8, Dima Pasechnik wrote: >> >> >> to me, two fields that are specified by the same irreducible polynomial >> over the same prime subfield ought to be identical. >> it'd be much better design, no

Re: [sage-devel] GF(16,'x') when we do not care about the 'x'

2016-01-20 Thread Nils Bruin
On Wednesday, January 20, 2016 at 3:22:54 PM UTC-8, Dima Pasechnik wrote: > > > to me, two fields that are specified by the same irreducible polynomial > over the same prime subfield ought to be identical. > it'd be much better design, not wedding them to named generators at all. > > That's not c

Re: [sage-devel] GF(16,'x') when we do not care about the 'x'

2016-01-20 Thread Dima Pasechnik
On Wednesday, 20 January 2016 22:18:04 UTC, Nils Bruin wrote: > > On Wednesday, January 20, 2016 at 1:49:12 PM UTC-8, Nathann Cohen wrote: >> >> If conflicts can come from the choice of a variable name, I'd say that >> the problem is not the variable's name but the code that relies on it. >> >

Re: [sage-devel] GF(16,'x') when we do not care about the 'x'

2016-01-20 Thread Nils Bruin
On Wednesday, January 20, 2016 at 1:49:12 PM UTC-8, Nathann Cohen wrote: > > If conflicts can come from the choice of a variable name, I'd say that > the problem is not the variable's name but the code that relies on it. > Conflicts do not arise from variable names (or at least not the conflicts

Re: [sage-devel] GF(16,'x') when we do not care about the 'x'

2016-01-20 Thread Nathann Cohen
> how about making GF(16) default to GF(16,'conway') > no symbols injected, no conflicts... If conflicts can come from the choice of a variable name, I'd say that the problem is not the variable's name but the code that relies on it. As far as I am concerned the name can be absolutely anything yo

Re: [sage-devel] GF(16,'x') when we do not care about the 'x'

2016-01-20 Thread Dima Pasechnik
how about making GF(16) default to GF(16,'conway') no symbols injected, no conflicts... On Wednesday, 20 January 2016 21:28:21 UTC, Nils Bruin wrote: > > On Wednesday, January 20, 2016 at 1:04:49 PM UTC-8, John Cremona wrote: > >> >> > Is there any reason to not make GF(16) behave as GF(16,'x') d

Re: [sage-devel] GF(16,'x') when we do not care about the 'x'

2016-01-20 Thread Nils Bruin
On Wednesday, January 20, 2016 at 1:04:49 PM UTC-8, John Cremona wrote: > > > Is there any reason to not make GF(16) behave as GF(16,'x') does, > > unless specified otherwise? I do not see the point of requesting the > > user to provide a character if (s)he does not care. > > > > +1 for having a d

Re: [sage-devel] GF(16,'x') when we do not care about the 'x'

2016-01-20 Thread John Cremona
On 20 Jan 2016 19:40, "Nathann Cohen" wrote: > > Hello everybody, > > I write a lot of code that requires me to build finite fields, and the > finite fields F_q, when q is not a prime number, cannot be > instanciated without specifying a variable name: > > sage: GF(16) > ValueError: parame

[sage-devel] GF(16,'x') when we do not care about the 'x'

2016-01-20 Thread Nathann Cohen
Hello everybody, I write a lot of code that requires me to build finite fields, and the finite fields F_q, when q is not a prime number, cannot be instanciated without specifying a variable name: sage: GF(16) ValueError: parameter 'conway' is required if no name given Thus, I always use