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2.9.1 Introduction to RING

Rings, and especially polynomial rings, play a central role in CoCoA.

The user can define many rings, but at any time a current ring is active within the system.

Once a ring has been defined, the system can handle the following mathematical objects defined over that ring:

 * elements of the ring
 * ideals
 * matrices
 * lists of objects
 * modules (submodules of a free module)
 * rings

Variables containing ring-dependent objects such as polynomials, ideals, and matrices are labeled by their ring. Any operation on them is performed in their ring, independently of what the current ring is.