cyclist: details of cyclists

In permutations: The Symmetric Group: Permutations of a Finite Set

details of cyclists

Description

Various functionality to deal with cyclists

Usage

vec2cyclist_single(p)
vec2cyclist_single_cpp(p)
remove_length_one(x)
cyclist2word_single(cyc, n)
nicify_cyclist(x, rm1=TRUE, smallest_first=TRUE)

Arguments

p	Integer vector, interpreted as a word
x, cyc	A cyclist
n	In function cycle2word_single(), the size of the permutation to induce
rm1, smallest_first	In function nicify_cyclist(), Boolean, governing whether or not to remove length-1 cycles, and whether or not to place the smallest element in each cycle first (non-default values are used by standard_cyclist())

Details

A cyclist is an object corresponding to a permutation P. It is a list with elements that are integer vectors corresponding to the cycles of P. This object is informally known as a cyclist, but there is no S3 class corresponding to it. In general use, one should not usually deal with cyclists at all: they are internal low-level objects not intended for the user.

An object of S3 class cycle is a (possibly named) list of cyclists. NB: there is an unavoidable notational clash here. When considering a single permutation, “cycle” means group-theoretic cycle [eg 1\longrightarrow 2\longrightarrow 3\longrightarrow 1]; when considering R objects, “cycle” means “an R object of class cycle whose elements are permutations written in cycle form”.

The elements of a cyclist are the disjoint group-theoretic cycles. Note the redundancies inherent: firstly, because the cycles commute, their order is immaterial (and a list is ordered); and secondly, the cycles themselves are invariant under cyclic permutation. Heigh ho.

A cyclist may be poorly formed in a number of ways: the cycles may include repeats, or contain elements which are common to more than one cycle. Such problems are detected by cyclist_valid(). Also, there are less serious problems: the cycles may include length-one cycles; the cycles may start with an element that is not the smallest. These issues are dealt with by nicify_cyclist().

• Function nicify_cyclist() takes a cyclist and puts it in a nice form but does not alter the permutation. It takes a cyclist and removes length-one cycles; then orders each cycle so that the smallest element appears first (that is, it changes (523) to (235)). It then orders the cycles by the smallest element. Function nicify_cyclist() is called automatically by cycle(). Remember that nicify_cyclist() takes a cyclist!

• Function remove_length_one() takes a cyclist and removes length-one cycles from it.

• Function vec2cyclist_single() takes a vector of integers, interpreted as a word, and converts it into a cyclist. Length-one cycles are discarded.

• Function vec2cyclist_single_cpp() is a placeholder for a function that is not yet written.

• Function cyclist2word_single() takes a cyclist and returns a vector corresponding to a single word. This function is not intended for everyday use; function cycle2word() is much more user-friendly.

• Function char2cyclist_single() takes a character string like “(342)(19)” and turns it into a cyclist, in this case list(c(3,4,2),c(1,9)). This function returns a cyclist which is not necessarily canonicalized: it might have length-one cycles, and the cycles themselves might start with the wrong number or be incorrectly ordered. It attempts to deal with absence of commas in a sensible way, so “(18,19)(2,5)” is dealt with appropriately too. The function is insensitive to spaces. Also, one can give it an argument which does not correspond to a cycle object, eg char2cyclist_single("(94)(32)(19)(1)") (in which “9” is repeated). The function does not return an error; to catch this kind of problem use char2cycle() which performs [via cycle()] the validity checks [cyclist_valid()] and nicification [nicify_cyclist()].

See also the “cyclist” vignette [type vignette("cyclist") at the command line] which contains more details and examples.

Author(s)

Robin K. S. Hankin

See Also

as.cycle,fbin,valid

Examples

vec2cyclist_single(c(7,9,3,5,8,6,1,4,2))

char2cyclist_single("(342)(19)")

nicify_cyclist(list(c(4, 6), c(7), c(2, 5, 1), c(8, 3)))
nicify_cyclist(list(c(4, 6), c(7), c(2, 5, 1), c(8, 3)), rm1=TRUE)

nicify_cyclist(list(c(4, 6), c(7), c(2, 5, 1), c(8, 3)), smallest_first=FALSE, rm1=FALSE)
nicify_cyclist(list(c(4, 6), c(7), c(2, 5, 1), c(8, 3)), smallest_first=FALSE, rm1=TRUE )
nicify_cyclist(list(c(4, 6), c(7), c(2, 5, 1), c(8, 3)), smallest_first=TRUE , rm1=FALSE)
nicify_cyclist(list(c(4, 6), c(7), c(2, 5, 1), c(8, 3)), smallest_first=TRUE , rm1=TRUE )
 

cyclist2word_single(list(c(1,4,3), c(7,8)))

permutations documentation built on July 13, 2026, 5:07 p.m.