In general we try to keep GAP 4 compatible with former releases as much as possible. Nevertheless, from time to time it seems appropriate to remove some commands or to change the names of some commands or variables. There are various reasons for that: Some functionality was improved and got another (hopefully better) interface, names turned out to be too special or too general for the underlying functionality, or names are found to be unintuitive or inconsistent with other names.
In this chapter we collect such old names while pointing to the sections which explain how to substitute them. Usually, old names will be available for several releases; they may be removed when they don't seem to be used any more.
The concept of a group action is sometimes referred to as a ``group
operation''. In GAP 3 as well as in older versions of GAP 4 the term
Operation was used instead of Action. We decided to change the names to
avoid confusion with the term ``operation'' as in DeclareOperation and
``Operations for Xyz''.
Here are some examples of such name changes.
OLD NOW USE
Operation Action
RepresentativeOperation RepresentativeAction
OperationHomomorphism ActionHomomorphism
FunctionOperation FunctionAction
With GAP 4.4 the package interface was changed. Thereby some functions became obsolete and the names of some others were made more consistent.
The following functions are no longer needed:
DeclarePackage, DeclareAutoPackage, DeclarePackageDocumentation and
DeclarePackageAutoDocumentation. They are substituted by entries in the
PackageInfo.g files, see Ext:The PackageInfo.g File.
The following function names were changed.
OLD NOW USE
RequirePackage LoadPackage
ReadPkg ReadPackage
RereadPkg RereadPackage
CreateCompletionFilesPkg CreateCompletionFilesPackage
Former versions of GAP 4 documented several functions for computing the
Smith or Hermite normal form of integer matrices. Some of them were never
implemented and it was unclear which commands to use. The functionality
of all of these commands is now available with NormalFormIntMat
(see NormalFormIntMat) and a few interface functions.
In former releases of GAP 4 there were some global variable names bound
to general information about the running GAP (path names, command line
options, ...). Although they were not officially documented they were used
by several users and in some packages. We mention here BANNER and QUIET.
This type of information is now collected in a record with name GAPInfo
and will become documented after a test phase.
Here are some further name changes.
OLD NOW USE
MonomialTotalDegreeLess MonomialExtGrlexLess
NormedVectors NormedRowVectors
[Top] [Up] [Previous] [Next] [Index]
GAP 4 manual
March 2006