Asking Macaulay2 for Help

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Section C.2 Asking Macaulay2 for Help

As you’re learning how to use Macaulay2, you will often find yourself needing some help. Luckily, Macaulay2 can help you directly! For example, suppose you know the name of a command, but do not remember the syntax to use it. You can ask ?command, and Macaulay2 will show you the different usages of the command you want to know about.

i10 : ?primaryDecomposition

primaryDecomposition -- irredundant primary decomposition of an ideal
  * Usage:
      primaryDecomposition I
  * Inputs:
    * I, an ideal, in a (quotient of a) polynomial ring R
  * Optional inputs:
    * MinimalGenerators => a Boolean value, default value true, if false, the
      components will not be minimalized
    * Strategy => ..., default value null,
  * Outputs:
    * a list, containing a minimal list of primary ideals whose intersection
    is I

Ways to use primaryDecomposition :
==================================

* "primaryDecomposition(Ideal)" -- see "primaryDecomposition" -- irredundant
  primary decomposition of an ideal
* "primaryDecomposition(Module)" -- irredundant primary decomposition of a
  module
* "primaryDecomposition(Ring)" -- see "primaryDecomposition(Module)" --
  irredundant primary decomposition of a module

For the programmer
==================

The object "primaryDecomposition" is a method function with options

If instead you’d rather read the complete Macaulay2 documentation on the command you are interested in, you can use the viewHelp command, which will open an html page with the documentation you asked for. So running

i11 : viewHelp "primaryDecomposition"

will open an html page dedicate to the method primaryDecomposition, which includes examples and links to related methods.