Varieties without minimal generators

While many familiar varieties have a minimal varietal generator, i.e., a regular projective finitely presentable regular generator such that none of its retracts is a regular generator, and even a unique one, we present (a) a variety having no minimal varietal generator at all and (b) a variety having two non-isomorphic minimal varietal generators. Moreover we demonstrate that the same effects can happen with respect to a weaker notion of minimality and are common even in module categories. Received April 7, 1999; accepted in final form July 10, 2000.