Commutative rings whose proper ideals are pure-semisimple.

Recall that an R-module M is pure-semisimple if every module in the category σ [ M ] is a direct sum of finitely generated (and indecomposable) modules. A theorem from commutative algebra due to Köthe, Cohen-Kaplansky and Griffith states that "a commutative ring R is pure-semisimple (i.e., every R-module is a direct sum of finitely generated modules) if and only if every R-module is a direct sum of cyclic modules, if and only if, R is an Artinian principal ideal ring". Consequently, every (or finitely generated, cyclic) ideal of R is pure-semisimple if and only if R is an Artinian principal ideal ring. Therefore, a natural question of this sort is "whether the same is true if one only assumes that every proper ideal of R is pure-semisimple?" The goal of this paper is to answer this question. The structure of such rings is completely described as Artinian principal ideal rings or local rings R with the maximal ideals M = R x ⊕ T which Rx is Artinian uniserial and T is semisimple. Also, we give several characterizations for commutative rings whose proper principal (finitely generated) ideals are pure-semisimple. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]