About cookies on this site Our websites require some cookies to function properly (required). In addition, other cookies may be used with your consent to analyze site usage, improve the user experience and for advertising. For more information, please review your options. By visiting our website, you agree to our processing of information as described in IBM’sprivacy statement. To provide a smooth navigation, your cookie preferences will be shared across the IBM web domains listed here.
Publication
SYMSAC 1981
Conference paper
A language for computational algebra
Abstract
This paper reports ongoing research at the IBM Research Center on the development of a language with extensible parameterized types and generic operators for computational algebra. The language provides an abstract data type mechanism for defining algorithms which work in as general a setting as possible. The language is based on the notions of domains and categories. Domains represent algebraic structures. Categories designate collections of domains having common operations with stated mathematical properties. Domains and categories are computed objects which may be dynamically assigned to variables, passed as arguments, and returned by functions. Although the language has been carefully tailored for the application of algebraic computation, it actually provides a very general abstract data type mechanism. Our notion of a category to group domains with common properties appears novel among programming languages (cf. Image functor of RUSSELL) and leads to a very powerful notion of abstract algorithms missing from other work on data types known to the authors.