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      1 /*
      2  * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
      3  * contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file distributed with
      4  * this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.
      5  * The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0
      6  * (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with
      7  * the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
      8  *
      9  *      http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
     10  *
     11  * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
     12  * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
     13  * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
     14  * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
     15  * limitations under the License.
     16  */
     17 package org.apache.commons.math;
     18 
     19 /**
     20  * Interface representing a <a href="http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Field.html">field</a>.
     21  * <p>
     22  * Classes implementing this interface will often be singletons.
     23  * </p>
     24  * @param <T> the type of the field elements
     25  * @see FieldElement
     26  * @version $Revision: 811685 $ $Date: 2009-09-05 19:36:48 +0200 (sam. 05 sept. 2009) $
     27  * @since 2.0
     28  */
     29 public interface Field<T> {
     30 
     31     /** Get the additive identity of the field.
     32      * <p>
     33      * The additive identity is the element e<sub>0</sub> of the field such that
     34      * for all elements a of the field, the equalities a + e<sub>0</sub> =
     35      * e<sub>0</sub> + a = a hold.
     36      * </p>
     37      * @return additive identity of the field
     38      */
     39     T getZero();
     40 
     41     /** Get the multiplicative identity of the field.
     42      * <p>
     43      * The multiplicative identity is the element e<sub>1</sub> of the field such that
     44      * for all elements a of the field, the equalities a &times; e<sub>1</sub> =
     45      * e<sub>1</sub> &times; a = a hold.
     46      * </p>
     47      * @return multiplicative identity of the field
     48      */
     49     T getOne();
     50 
     51 }
     52