1 /*
2  * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
3  * contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file distributed with
4  * this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.
5  * The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0
6  * (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with
7  * the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
8  *
9  *      http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
10  *
11  * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
12  * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
13  * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
14  * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
15  * limitations under the License.
16  */
17 package org.apache.commons.math;
18 
19 /**
20  * Interface representing a <a href="http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Field.html">field</a>.
21  * <p>
22  * Classes implementing this interface will often be singletons.
23  * </p>
24  * @param <T> the type of the field elements
25  * @see FieldElement
26  * @version $Revision: 811685 $ $Date: 2009-09-05 19:36:48 +0200 (sam. 05 sept. 2009) $
27  * @since 2.0
28  */
29 public interface Field<T> {
30 
31     /** Get the additive identity of the field.
32      * <p>
33      * The additive identity is the element e<sub>0</sub> of the field such that
34      * for all elements a of the field, the equalities a + e<sub>0</sub> =
35      * e<sub>0</sub> + a = a hold.
36      * </p>
37      * @return additive identity of the field
38      */
getZero()39     T getZero();
40 
41     /** Get the multiplicative identity of the field.
42      * <p>
43      * The multiplicative identity is the element e<sub>1</sub> of the field such that
44      * for all elements a of the field, the equalities a &times; e<sub>1</sub> =
45      * e<sub>1</sub> &times; a = a hold.
46      * </p>
47      * @return multiplicative identity of the field
48      */
getOne()49     T getOne();
50 
51 }
52