Interrupting Macaulay's computations

Certain operations in Macaulay can be stopped before their completion. Some of these can then be continued. On the Macintosh, Macaulay can be interrupted by clicking the mouse button. On all other systems, Macaulay can be interrupted by typing (CNTRL)-C.

Each of the computation commands (see Chapter 7) can be interrupted and then restarted using the continue command. The commands type, hilb, wedge, reduce and lift can be cancelled. They cannot be continued or restarted, short of re-issuing the original command.

The exact actions taken when you interrupt a computation are described in the following list.

calc

Interrupting this command temporarily pauses the computation, and the user can use all the Macaulay commands desired, before restarting the computation with the continue command (see Chapter 7).

type

Interrupting the type command stops displaying the current matrix.

hilb

Interrupting hilb simply stops the computation of the Hilbert function. No partial results exist to display.

wedge

Interrupting this command stops the computation of the determinants, and the result matrix contains those determinants already computed. Short of restarting the whole computation, there is no way to continue the command.

reduce,lift

This command when interrupted returns the partially constructed results. Again, there is no way to continue this computation after the interrupt.