# degree

© 2005 John Abbott
GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2

- Examples
- User documentation
  - Constructors
  - Operations
    - Arithmetic
    - Queries
- Maintainer documentation
- Bugs, Shortcomings and other ideas

CoCoALib Documentation Index

## Examples

- ex-PolyRing1.C
- ex-RingElem1.C
- ex-module2.C

## User documentation

The class degree is used to represent the values returned by the "deg" function applied to power products and (multivariate) polynomials. Recall that in general a degree is a value in Z^k; the value of k and the way the degree is computed (equiv. weight matrix) are specified when creating the PPOrdering object used for making the PPMonoid of the polynomial ring -- see the function NewPolyRing.

If t1 and t2 are two power products then the degree of their product is just the sum of their individual degrees; and naturally, if t1 divides t2 then the degree of the quotient is the difference of their degrees. The degree values are totally ordered using a lexicographic ordering. Note that a degree may have negative components.

### Constructors

A `degree` object may be created by using one of the following functions:

- `degree d1(k);` -- create a new degree object with value (0,0,...,0), with k zeroes
- `wdeg(f)` -- where f is a `RingElem` belonging to a `PolyRing`
- `wdeg(t)` -- where t is a `PPMonoidElem` (see `PPMonoid`)

### Operations

The following functions are available for objects of type degree:

- `d1 = d2` -- assignment, d1 must be non-const
- `cout << d` -- print out the degree
- `GradingDim(d)` -- get the number of the components
- `d[s]` -- get the s-th component of the degree (as a BigInt) (for 0 <= s < k)
- `SetComponent(d, k, n)` -- sets the k-th component of d to n (mach.int. or `BigInt`)

#### Arithmetic

- `d1 + d2` -- sum
- `d1 - d2` -- difference (there might be no PP with such a degree)
- `d1 += d2` -- equivalent to d1 = d1 + d2
- `d1 -= d2` -- equivalent to d1 = d1 - d2
- `top(d1, d2)` -- coordinate-by-coordinate maximum (a sort of "lcm")
- `cmp(d1, d2)` -- (int) result is <0, =0, >0 according as d1 <,=,> d2

#### Queries

The six comparison operators may be used for comparing degrees (using the lexicographic ordering).

- `IsZero(d)` -- return true iff d is the zero degree

## Maintainer documentation

So far the implementation is very simple. The primary design choice was to use C++ std::vector<>s for holding the values -- indeed a `degree` object is just a "wrapped up" vector of values of type `degree::ElementType`. For a first implementation this conveniently hides issues of memory management etc. Since I do not expect huge numbers of `degree` objects to created and destroyed, there seems little benefit in trying to use `MemPool`s (except it might be simpler to detect memory leaks...) I have preferred to make most functions friends rather than members, mostly because I prefer the syntax of normal function calls.

The `CheckCompatible` function is simple so I made it inline. Note the type of the third argument: it is deliberately not (a reference to) a `std::string` because I wanted to avoid calling a ctor for a `std::string` unless an error is definitely to be signalled. I made it a private static member function so that within it there is free access to `myCoords`, the data member of a `degree` object; also the call `degree::CheckCompatible` makes it clear that it is special to degrees.

As is generally done in CoCoALib the member function `mySetComponent` only uses CoCoA_ASSERT for the index range check. In contrast, the non-member fn `SetComponent` always performs a check on the index value. The member fn `operator[]` also always performs a check on the index value because it is the only way to get read access to the degree components. I used `MachineInt` as the type for the index to avoid the nasty surprises C++ can spring with silent conversions between various integer types.

In implementations of functions on degrees I have preferred to place the lengths of the degree vectors in a const local variable: it seems cleaner than calling repeatedly `myCoords.size()`, and might even be fractionally faster.

`operator<<` no longer handles the case of one-dimensional degrees specially so that the value is not printed inside parentheses.

## Bugs, Shortcomings and other ideas

The implementation uses `BigInt`s internally to hold the values of the degree coordinates. The allows a smooth transition to examples with huge degrees but could cause some run-time performance degradation. If many complaints about lack of speed surface, I'll review the implementation.

Is public write-access to the components of a degree object desirable? Or is this a bug?

No special handling for the case of a grading over Z (i.e. k=1) other than for printing. Is this really a shortcoming?

Printing via `operator<<` is perhaps rather crude? Is the special printing for k=1 really such a clever idea?

`GradingDim(const degree&)` seems a bit redundant, but it is clearer than "dim" or "size"

Is use of `MachineInt` for the index values such a clever idea?