Flexible Object Hierarchies in Polymake

摘要

Initially polymake was conceived as a collection of tools for studying convex polyhedra only. The early versions of polymake had a very primitive data management, built around a single data type for polyhedra. However, as the time passed, more and more different discrete mathematical structures like graphs and simplicial complexes came along. This gave rise to a properly typed object hierarchy, which was strict enough to support established object-oriented (OO) software techniques, but, on the other side, flexible enough to allow for continuous extensions without breaking the compatibility.