The theory of difference equations is now enjoying a period of Renaissance. Witness the large number of papers in which problems, having at first sight no common features, are reduced to the investigation of subsequent iterations of the maps f* IR. m ~ IR. m, m > 0, or (which is, in fact, the same) to difference equations The world of difference equations, which has been almost hidden up to now, begins to open in all its richness. Those experts, who usually use differential equations and, in fact, believe in their universality, are now discovering a completely new approach which re- sembles...