Re: MATLAB COMPATIBILITY (sparse matrices)

[Thomas Hoffmann]

You asked:

Another function that needs to be written would be the
reordering algorithms.  I don't know very much about this.
A quick look at Matlab seems to talk about 'Coletree',
and 'Reverse Cuthill-McKee ordering'.

Could someone who knows about this stuff give me some references
(Textbooks or papers) on matrix reordering.

Although I would not say that I know about this stuff, I remembered a
textbook

 H.R. Schwarz: Methode der finiten Elemente, Teubner 1984
 
This is in German, but some references may be of interest for you:

Cuthill-McKee-algorithm:

Cuthill, E.: Several strategies for reducing the band width of matrices.
 Sparse matrices and their applications, D.J.Rose and R.A.Willoughby, eds.
 New York 1972, 157-166
 
Cuthill, E., McKee,J.: Reducing the bandwidth of sparse symmetric matrices. 
 In: Proc. ACM Nat.Conf. New York 1969, 157-172
 
reverse Cuthill-McKee (RCM): 

George,J.A.: Computer implementation of the finite element method.
 Techn.Rep. STAN-CS-71-208, Computer Science Dept., Stanford Univ.,
 Stanford, Calif. 1971
 
another modification of CM:

Gibbs,N.E.,Poole,W.G.,Stockmeyer,P.K.: An algorithm for reducing the 
bandwidth and profile of a sparse matrix. SIAM J.Numer.Anal.13(1976)236-250

Hope that helps.