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Re: Ohmygod, another round of column/row-major... [message #14452 is a reply to message #14437]

Wed, 03 March 1999 00:00

Steve Scheele
Messages: 6
Registered: February 1999

Junior Member

Since I am new to this news group and missed all the earlier fun on the
column/row major debate, I thought I would jump in here.

> The current text (version 5.2) says the *exact* opposite, namely
> that C/Pascal etc. are column-major!!

C does not have true multi-dimensional arrays. It does fake
multi-dimensional arrays however by using arrays of pointers to arrays, etc.
In that sense 2-dimensional C arrays in row-major order (Ref: Harbison &
AStteele, p135).

Fortran is column-major, and IDL was originally written in Fortran. I assume
that this is the reason that IDL is column-major. However, since Fortran has
no array arithmetic, it seems somewhat irrelevant at this point.

I had never heard of column-major arrays until I encountered it when helping
my (then) 12-year old son with new math. It drove me batty then (20 years
ago) and it drives me batty now when I try to do matrix arithmetic using
IDL. Even my most recent text books use row-major arrays. Every formula I
take from the literature must be translated to column-major format.

However, it does appear unlikely that IDL will change to row-major. I think
that the only solution is to change the other 99.999% of the world :)

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[Message index]

		Re: Ohmygod, another round of column/row-major... By: mgs on Thu, 04 March 1999 00:00
		Re: Ohmygod, another round of column/row-major... By: Dr. G. Scott Lett on Thu, 04 March 1999 00:00
		Re: Ohmygod, another round of column/row-major... By: Axel vom Endt on Thu, 04 March 1999 00:00
		Re: Ohmygod, another round of column/row-major... By: Steve Scheele on Wed, 03 March 1999 00:00
		Re: Ohmygod, another round of column/row-major... By: davidf on Wed, 03 March 1999 00:00

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