Language Reference

ECHELON Function

ECHELON (matrix);

The ECHELON function uses elementary row operations to reduce a matrix to row-echelon normal form, as in the following example (Graybill, 1969): 

a = {3  6  9,
     1  2  5,
     2  4 10 };
e = echelon(a);
print e;

Figure 24.114: Result of the ECHELON Function

e
1 2 0
0 0 1
0 0 0 




            

            


            
If the argument is a square matrix, then the row-echelon normal form can be obtained from the Hermite normal form by rearranging
               rows that are all zeros. See the HERMITE function
                for details about the Hermite normal form.