Introduction

A rich ring hierarchy is provided, supporting both commutative and noncommutative rings.

A number of basic rings are provided, such as the integers, integers mod n and numerous fields.

A recursive rings implementation is then built on top of the basic rings via a number of generic ring constructions. These include univariate and multivariate polynomials and power series, univariate Laurent and Puiseux series, residue rings, matrix algebras, etc.

Where possible, these constructions can be built on top of one another in generic towers.

The ring hierarchy can be extended by implementing new rings to follow one or more ring interfaces. Generic functionality provided by the system is then automatically available for the new rings. These implementations can either be generic or can be specialised implementations provided by, for example, a C library.

In most cases, the interfaces consist of a set of constructors and functions that must be implemented to satisfy the interface. These are the functions that the generic code relies on being available.