GAP

Main Branches

Downloads  Installation  Overview  Data Libraries  Packages  Documentation  Contacts  FAQ  GAP 3 

Documentation

There is a lot of written material telling about the functionality and use of GAP, providing information about algorithmic background and giving hints for writing own GAP code.

  • Manuals

    For the users of GAP we provide a Tutorial giving a first introduction to the system and a Reference Manual with complete descriptions of all library functions and examples of their use. Most essential changes from previous GAP releases are described in the CHANGES.md file.

    Each GAP package has its individual manual which you can access through the list of Packages. A list of pointers to all these package manuals is also given on the page Manuals.

  • Learning GAP

    In addition to the Tutorial mentioned above there is a variety of material intended to help people to learn on their own the GAP language and the use of the GAP system. We have tried to organize links to such material somewhat according to the level and intended audience on the page quoted in the heading.

  • Teaching Material

    GAP has been used in several places to support the teaching of a variety of courses. We are grateful to the colleagues who allowed us to point to some course material of such courses and we would appreciate to obtain access to further such material. We hope that this can be helpful to colleagues intending a similar use of GAP, but it may also be used by students studying the topics of such courses.

  • Applications

    On this page we have collected links to descriptions of various applications of GAP, some of them in rather unexpected areas.

  • Examples

    Some examples of the use of GAP from papers and talks, contributed by different authors, have been worked out in detail and are listed on the page quoted in the heading. Of course, the examples of this list cover only a small part of the functionality of GAP. You can find many further ones by browsing through the GAP Forum Archive, in the slides and handouts of Talks, and in the papers listed in the Bibliography of publications quoting GAP.

  • The GAP Forum Archive

    The correspondence that has taken place in the GAP Forum has been kept in the Forum Archive. A good deal of this correspondence concerns questions how to solve problems using GAP and the answers given by other users or developers. These may be of help for further problems. The GAP Forum Archive can be searched by date, senders' names, or certain keywords. Note that in particular early Forum correspondence is likely to concern GAP 3 rather than GAP 4.

  • Some Talks and Preprints

    This is a collection of some preprints of papers as well as handouts and slides from talks related to GAP or, in a few cases, more widely to computational group theory. Note that some earlier of these texts still refer to GAP 3 rather than GAP 4.

  • The GAP Bibliography

    We maintain a bibliography of papers citing GAP. Some of these papers describe applications of GAP, others algorithmic methods that are implemented in GAP. We hope that looking at these papers will be helpful for users and we ask that you help us to keep this bibliography up to date by sending us the bibliographical data of your own publications citing GAP. Please have a look at the page on feedback. Note that some of the listed papers may still refer to use of GAP 3 rather than GAP 4.

  • References for Methods of Computational Group Theory

    This offers some information on the mathematical background of the methods implemented in GAP and its packages. It provides some annotated references to books and survey articles on computational group theory and neighbouring fields.

  • Some History of GAP

    The 'History' page provides some documents (prefaces of previous releases and 'Interim Reports') that mark steps of the development of GAP.