Matrix smobs in guile

Klaus Schilling (Klaus.Schilling@home.ivm.de)
Fri, 14 Aug 1998 04:57:25 +0200 (MET DST)

Alex Stark writes:
>
> Question: is there a standard smob for matrices?
>
> Motivation:
> 1) Matrices are a vital part of much numerical computation;
> 2) In numerical apps which indicates the use of a smob which is a
> collection of matrices, a matrix building block would be handy;

Chris Lee recently wrote a package providing matrice support for guile,
it is based on BLAS and LAPACK. He also tried to use Meschach for that.
Maybe it is lying around on the developper's site.

> 2) It's useful to let guile do most of the work such as thru uniform
> arrays;
> 3) The uniform array is not esp convenient from C;
Newest snapshots contain special support for vectors of floats. Maybe
Matrices can be built in the same way as vectors of vectors.

> 4) Why not define a smob which record which contains a uniform array
> with some other information, such as the type and dimensions?
>
> Supplementary issues: When transferring data to and from octave, what
> structure is passed? What about plotting with gnuplot as one can in
> Octave?

There are attempts to replace octave/matlab control language with scheme.
Especially M.Vollmer and M.Galassi are interested in that.

Klaus Schilling