Re: polcoeff() mystery

[Karim BELABAS <Karim.Belabas@math.u-psud.fr>]

On Thu, 4 Jul 2002, Ilya Zakharevich wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 04, 2002 at 02:23:08PM +0200, Bill Allombert wrote:
> > There are three things to keep in mind:
> > 1) GP know only about univariate polynomials over a field.
>
> "Currently".  Given Groebner bases, this should be easy to fix.
>
> > 2) 'foo^0 is printed as 1 for every foo., but is internally still 'foo^0
> > 3) The same happen for zero complex, quadratic and algebraic numbers.
> >
> > There is no such thing as x^2+y*x+z.
>
> Why?  *This* is what was confusing me so much when "inefficient"
> internal representation was mentioned.  I was doing \x, and saw
> something very efficient.
>
> Which algorithsms assume that a poly is "filled"?

Nearly everything operates on "filled" single variable polynomials. Once the
higher level wrappers have done their stuff [ checking types, degrees, variable
priorities, etc ], lower level routines assume everything is compatible (all args
in sight are t_POL in the same variable) and operate on vectors of coefficients.
If one of them were to return a scalar instead, the next one would immediately
raise a SEGV.

> > Maybe a print function that output 'foo^0 as 'foo^0 not 1 could be useful.
>
> \x *must*.

\x *does*. Disable automatic simplification (\y) if you want \x to operate in the
way you expect.

    Karim.
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Karim Belabas                    Tel: (+33) (0)1 69 15 57 48
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