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GAP System for Computational Discrete Algebra |
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Welcome to
GAP - Groups, Algorithms, Programming -
a System for Computational Discrete Algebra
The current version is GAP {{site.data.release.version}} released on {{site.data.release.date}}.
GAP is a system for computational discrete algebra, with particular emphasis on [Computational Group Theory]({{ site.baseurl }}/Doc/references.html). GAP provides a {% include ref.html label="The Programming Language" text="programming language" %}, a library of thousands of functions implementing algebraic algorithms written in the GAP language as well as large [data libraries]({{ site.baseurl }}/Datalib/datalib.html) of algebraic objects. See [here]({{ site.baseurl }}/Overview/overview.html) for details of the mathematical capabilities. The system, including source, is distributed [freely]({{ site.baseurl }}/Download/copyright.html#free). You can study and easily modify or extend it for your special use.
How to install GAP is described in [Installation]({{ site.baseurl }}/Download/index.html). The current release is GAP {{site.data.release.version}} and it can be obtained from our [downloads page]({{ site.baseurl }}/Releases/{{site.data.release.version}}.html). This website describes this release if not stated otherwise. Changes from earlier versions are described in the Release history.
We welcome contributions to GAP. The GAP development repository is hosted on GitHub. You may find some guidance on contributing via GitHub here. If you have any questions, or suggestions for GAP, the repository, or documentation, feel free to contact us via the open GAP development mailing list or submit an issue or a pull request on GitHub. There is an extensive documentation advising how to write a GAP code. Also there is a [guidance]({{ site.baseurl }}/Packages/example.html) on developing a [GAP package]({{ site.baseurl }}/Packages/packages.html) and its [submission]({{ site.baseurl }}/Contacts/submit.html) to GAP.
GAP has been and is developed by international cooperation of many [people]({{ site.baseurl }}/Contacts/People/people.html), including user contributions. We gratefully acknowledge all this help as well as some [funding]({{ site.baseurl }}/Contacts/funding.html). GAP was started at Lehrstuhl D für Mathematik, RWTH Aachen in [1986]({{ site.baseurl }}/Doc/History/preface_2.4.html). After 1997 the development of GAP was coordinated in St Andrews. Since March 2005, the [GAP Centers]({{ site.baseurl }}/Contacts/centres.html) in Aachen, Braunschweig, Fort Collins, and St Andrews took over coordination. They were joined by Kaiserslautern as fifth GAP center in 2020. Since July 2022, the GAP center in Kaiserslautern is coordinating the further development and maintenance of GAP.
In July 2008, GAP was awarded the ACM/SIGSAM Richard Dimick Jenks Memorial Prize for Excellence in Software Engineering applied to Computer Algebra.