Re: Smith Form

[Laurent Decreusefond]

Le 16 oct. 07 à 20:47, Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso a écrit :

> 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.

Surely but in my present application, I have a random matrix (with  
float numbers as coefficients) which is transformed in deux integer  
valued matrices. I know very well how to generate a random matrix in  
octave but not in Maxima/GAP or any other discrete math oriented soft  
and the reverse is true for the computation of the Smith form. I know  
there is SAGE which combines all these softs but I wasn't able to  
bring the result of an Octave operation into a GAP operation within  
SAGE.


I'm just trying to apply a "least effort" principle )))




> HTH,
> - Jordi G. H.