Re: group identification patch

[Ilya Zakharevich <ilya@Math.Berkeley.EDU>]

On Wed, Apr 02, 2003 at 03:05:49PM +0200, Bill Allombert wrote:
> Hello PARI-dev,
> 
> Here a (large) patch that add a feature similar to GAP IdGroup
> function for weakly super-solvable group.

> +GEN
> +groupelts_center(GEN S)
> +{

This looks like a part of a very sad story.  It looks like different
(complicated) algorithms used for implementation of particular PARI
functions have tons of small C helper functions.  Some of these helper
functions have a signature good for importing to PARI.  Some of these
helper functions provide algorithms of general interest (I remember
seeing something like a knapsack algo etc., now some algorithms for
group manipulation).

But all these goodies are sitting there undocumented - and as a
consequence, unused!  Should not we keep a list of "semi-supported"
importable toolbox-functions in PARI core?

Yours,
Ilya