Dear GAP-forum,

We have come across the following limitation of GAP.
We want to construct BCH codes. To do that, we need to compute in a finite
field. For example, to construct a binary BCH code, with wordlength 19,
GAP must find a primitive 19th root of unity, which is an element of
GF(2^18), 18 being the multiplicative order of 2 modulo 19. But GAP limits
the size of a finite field to 2^16.
Will this limitation be removed in the near future, or is there another
way to solve the problem?

Secondly we would like to know if the "[" operator could be redefined for
records, like "+", "-" and "^". It would be very useful if we could use
commands like:

word := Code[4];        # Where "Code" is a record containing a code.
                        # "word" would become the fourth codeword

We hope you can help.

Erik Roijackers,
Jasper Cramwinckel and
Reinald Baart