Re: Smith Form

[Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso]

On 16/10/2007, Laurent Decreusefond <address@hidden> wrote:
> I looked through the documentation and find no occurrence of the term
> Smith Form so my question is : does there exist a package which
> computes the Smith normal form of a matrix with integer coefficients ?

I usually think of Octave as a tool that follows Unix philosophy: one
tool that does one job, and one job only, and does it well. In this
case, the job that I think Octave does is "numerical analysis". :-)

(Yes we can argue about this, but let's not.)

The Smith normal form seems in general to be of little use in
numerical analysis. Perhaps it is better suited for Maxima, but I'm
pretty sure it's not implemented their either. I suggest you write an
implementation and submit it to Maxima for consideration.

HTH,
- Jordi G. H.