Zulip Chat Archive

Stream: maths

Topic: Star semiring

Yaël Dillies (Dec 22 2022 at 13:22):

I was just reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiring#Star_semirings. Is a docs#star_ring a star semiring in that sense? It seems not :frown:

Eric Wieser (Dec 22 2022 at 13:29):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/*-algebra has no mention of *-semirings

Yaël Dillies (Dec 22 2022 at 13:30):

This seems like an unfortunate name clash. Any thoughts on this? Context is #17965

Eric Wieser (Dec 22 2022 at 13:31):

https://hackage.haskell.org/package/semirings seems to agree with wikipedia on the use of *-semiring

Yaël Dillies (Dec 22 2022 at 13:31):

I'm thinking maybe name everything kstar instead of star when it's about the Kleene star.

Eric Wieser (Dec 22 2022 at 13:32):

At the very least we need to change the documentation of docs#has_star.star to not claim that we are using star-semirings, or at least clarify the confusion

Yaël Dillies (Dec 22 2022 at 13:32):

I will cross-reference the Wikipedia pages too.

Eric Wieser (Dec 22 2022 at 13:32):

Don't forget to forward-port the doc fix

Riccardo Brasca (Dec 22 2022 at 13:33):

I my personal opinion the use of star we currently have is the most used in mathematics.

Eric Wieser (Dec 22 2022 at 13:37):

Well, except that seemingly half the people using the API don't like calling it star and use conj as the name instead

Patrick Massot (Dec 22 2022 at 14:49):

It seems pretty clear to me that the Kleene stuff is much more specialized and should get a longer name.

Yaël Dillies (Dec 22 2022 at 16:50):

Agreed. I'm settling on kstar for now.

Kevin Buzzard (Dec 22 2022 at 17:18):

that's nice because for those that know about Kleene stars they'll realise that this is what it is

Last updated: Dec 20 2023 at 11:08 UTC