Construction of groups

asked 2011-04-27 18:30:28 +0200

chaesloc
148 ●4 ●10 ●17

updated 2011-04-27 18:30:46 +0200

I could not find any Sage function that constructs all groups of a certain (not necessarily small) order - is there one?

There is one for GAP, but it is in the grpconst module, which is not included by default in Sage. Do you find it reasonable to request that it is included by default? After all, the Sage installation instructions recommend installing the GAP small groups database, but that database was created with the module in question.

answered 2011-04-28 16:19:42 +0200

benjaminfjones
2775 ●8 ●44 ●76 http://bfj7.com/

There is no function (apart from what is included through GAP) to construct all groups of a given order in Sage. You can certainly use the grpconst module from GAP in Sage using the GAP interface.

If you can make a good case for why it should be included by default in Sage and bring it up on sage-devel, I think the community would discuss its inclusion.

For instance, what kinds of problems would you like to solve using such a function? How would you use it (for research, for demonstrations in an algebra class, etc..) How would the inclusion of the module be better than say including the small groups database (which I assume uses a large amount of disk space)?

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"How would the inclusion of the module be better than say including the small groups database" - the two are not incompatible. The module uses a negligible amount of disk space, is loaded manually, does not break anything, and is trivial to package (i.e. copy its folder to gap folder). So I see no downsides to including it. The upside is that if one normally uses the database, but stumbles upon a group not in it, there will be a workaround. So I guess my main reason is "for completeness".

chaesloc ( 2011-04-28 21:39:36 +0200 )edit

I would argue that completeness alone is not a compelling reason for the inclusion of a given feature. What is the use-case for the module that you have in mind?

benjaminfjones ( 2011-04-29 02:23:44 +0200 )edit

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