Macaulay2 / Macaulay2/M2

Basic guide for when to use different data types

Open
#4,302 1 comment 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub
Documentation
Dominant language
Macaulay2
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435
Forks
297
Avg merge
4d 20h
Merged PRs (30d)
11

Description

As part of the documentation refresh work, add a basic user-facing guide for choosing among common Macaulay2 data types.

The goal is not full type-system documentation, but a practical guide that helps users answer questions like “which type should I use here?”

Possible scope:
- explain the most commonly confused container/data choices
- note which types are mutable vs immutable
- give short “use X when ..., use Y when ...” examples
- cross-link to the existing type documentation for deeper details

Examples that may be worth covering include:
- `List` vs `Sequence` vs `MutableList`
- `HashTable` vs `MutableHashTable`
- `Set` vs list-like collections
- other commonly encountered user-facing types if there are obvious gaps

This would be especially useful as an introductory node or short guide that can be linked from relevant documentation pages.

Contributor guide

No contributing guide indexed for this repository

Research direction

Start by locating the existing type documentation and the documentation navigation structure. Compare the commonly confused choices named in the issue, then draft a short user-facing guide with mutable/immutable notes, use-case examples, and links to deeper type documentation. Done means users can choose among the covered types without reading the full type-system reference.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Domain
documentation
Issue type
Documentation
Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Activity status
Quiet
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
65/100

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