On subtractive varieties .2. General properties

As a sequel to [23] we investigate ideal properties focusing on subtractive varieties. After having listed a few basic results, we give several characterizations of the commutator of ideals and prove, for example, that it commutes with finite direct products. We deal with the ideal extension property (IEP) and with related commutator properties, showing for instance that IEP implies that the commutator commutes with restriction to subalgebras. Then we characterize varieties with distributive ideal lattices and relate this property with (a form of) equationally definable principal ideals and with IEP. Then, at the other extreme, we deal with Abelian and Hamiltonian properties (of ideals and congruences), giving for example a purely ideal theoretic characterization of varieties of Abelian groups with linear operations. To finish with, we present a few examples aiming at vindicating our work.