The Identity function reference article from the English Wikipedia on 24-Jul-2004 (provided by Fixed Reference: snapshots of Wikipedia from wikipedia.org)

Identity function

An identity function f is a function which doesn't have any effect: it always returns the same value that was used as its argument.

Formally, if M is a set, we define the identity function id_M on M to be that function with domain and codomain M which satisfies

id_M(x) = x    for all elements x in M.

If f : M → N is any function, then we have f o id_M = f = id_N o f. In particular, id_M is the identity element of the monoid of all functions from M to M.

When choosing M equal to the positive integers, one obtains the identity function Id(n), which is a multiplicative function considered in number theory.

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