Matvec Users’ Guide

Chapter 3
Matrix Object
Matrix computation is a complex task. Matvec provides a comprehensive set of functions and tools, which
are powerful and easy to learn, to perform the massive matrix manipulation and sophisticated matrix computation.
In particular, Matvec can be used to answer what-if questions raised by your research colleagues
or by yourself.
3.1 Creation
There are several ways to create a matrix object. The three common matrix creation methods are listed
below:
• type in all elements row-by-row directly from keyboard with the special operator [ and ]. That is
starting with [, separating each elements with comma (,), separating each row with semicolon (;), and
ending with ]. For example,
A = [1.0, 2.0, -2.0; 3.0, 2.0, sqrt(9.0)];
• use object-creating friend functions such as Matrix(m,n), ones(m,n), zeros(m,n), and sample(m,n). For
example,
> A = Matrix(2,3) # Caution: its contents could be junk
> B = ones(2,3)
Col 1 Col 2 Col 3
Row 1 3.24485e-308 2.26268e-76 1.28459e-153
Row 2 3.24492e-308 5.82751e+252 3.94257e+180
Col 1 Col 2 Col 3
Row 1 1 1 1
Row 2 1 1 1
> C = zeros(2,3)
Col 1 Col 2 Col 3
Row 1 0 0 0
Row 2 0 0 0
> D = sample(2,3) // generated from Uniform(0.0,1.0)
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