Re: proposal to bring ifactor into src/, was: Factoring large integers
Subject: Re: proposal to bring ifactor into src/, was: Factoring large integers
From: Andrej Vodopivec
Date: Thu, 2 Feb 2006 20:16:55 -0800
maxima uses cfactor function in rat3c.lisp to factor integers. If we
want all functions which need integer factorization to benifit from
ifactor, we should redefine cfactor so that it uses ifactor package.
This changes primep to become probabilistic primality test - so we
should also replace primep with primep_pr. Some documentation would
need to be updated. Do we want this changes in the next release?
Andrej
2006/2/2, Robert Dodier <robert.dodier at gmail.com>:
> On 2/2/06, Andrej Vodopivec <andrej.vodopivec at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I can look into moving ifacor to src/. I wouldn't mind having
> > different functions for factoring polynomials and factoring integers.
>
> I guess factor(1234) is ambiguous since there's no way to tell
> whether you mean to treat 1234 as a polynomial or an integer,
> so it seems like it would be more correct to have two functions.
> It's going to be a little surprising to users who enter factor(1234)
> and get 1234 as the result, expecting 2 * 617 instead. I don't
> know how to help those people find ifactor; I don't really like
> warning messages.
>
> best,
> Robert Dodier
>