[GAP Forum] "IsRationalNumber" as synonym for "IsRat"

Lisette Brillemans lisette.brillemans at mensa.nl
Thu Feb 23 10:27:58 GMT 2012


Dear Jakob, dear GAP Forum,

On 21 Feb 2012, at 19:04, kroeker wrote:

> Dear GAP-developers,
>
> I do not really like the function name  "IsRat" for the check if an object 
> is a rational number
> and suggest to introduce the synonym "IsRationalNumber" :
>  DeclareSynonym("IsRationalNumber",IsRat);
>
> What is your opinion?
>
> Jakob

GAP as a number of short names for such common categories like e.g. `IsInt', 
`IsPosInt', `IsCyc',
`IsBool', `IsFFE', `IsChar', `IsPerm' etc., so to my mind `IsRat' fits this 
naming scheme quite
well. These are used in many method installations and having compact names 
is quite handy.

The page http://www.gap-system.org/Faq/Usage/usage1.html explains how to 
customise GAP using the
.gaprc file, so if you prefer this synonym for your personal use, you may 
add this line there.
Of course, any code using it will not work without this declaration.

Best wishes,
Alexander
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Jakob has a point here. IsRat is a question about your mouse, not about a 
number. ;)
I have a hamster and tried IsRat on him.

> Hamster:=1;    # I have one hamster
[ 1
> IsRat(Hamster);
[ true


With regards,


Lisette




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