Commutative local rings whose ideals are direct sums of cyclic modules (Q742946)

Motivated by the classical result of Cohen-Kaplansky and Köthe which characterizes commutative rings with the property that every module is a direct sum of cyclic modules, the first author with others started the study of commutative rings for which every ideal is a direct sum of cyclic modules. Several characterizations of commutative Noetherian local rings whose ideals are direct sums of cyclic modules were found [\textit{M. Behboodi} et al., J. Algebra 345, No. 1, 257--265 (2011; Zbl 1244.13008)]. In the paper under review, the question is pursued further, but the requirement for the ring to be Noetherian is dropped. The main theorem, which contains five equivalences for commutative local rings \(R\) whose ideals are direct sums of cyclic modules, is almost identical to the one found in the above-mentioned paper for commutative Noetherian local rings whose ideals are direct sums of cyclic modules. The proof is done through a series of theorems, propositions and lemmas. To mention but a few of the equivalences in the theorem: Every ideal of the ring \(R\) is a direct sum of cyclic \(R\)-modules if and only if every ideal of \(R\) is a direct sum of cyclic modules of which at most two are nonsimple if and only if \(R\) is the direct sum of cyclic modules of which at most two summand, say \(Rx\) and \(Ry\), are nonsimple and \(R/\mathrm{Ann}(x)\) and \(R/\mathrm{Ann}(y)\) are principal ideal rings if and only if every ideal of \(R\) is a direct summand of a direct sum of cyclic modules. The paper is concluded by several examples illustrating the main results and showing that certain of the requirements are not superfluous.