Re: [Help-gsl] blas rotm index computation

[Brian Gough]

At Fri,  1 May 2009 09:46:51 +0200,
Marco Maggi wrote:
> so when the vector stride is negative the elements
> of the vector are iterated starting from index:
> 
> i = (X->size - 1) * -(X->stride);
> 
> which equals:
> 
> i = (X->size - 1) * abs(X->stride);

Hello,
According the the original BLAS standards, a negative stride (inc)
accesses the elements backwards, i.e.  incX=-1 accesses the vector as

X->data[(N-1)],  X->data[(N-2)], ...., X->data[0].

and incX=-2 as 

X->data[2*(N-1)],  X->data[2*(N-2)], ...., X->data[0].

Positive and negative inc values can be used together, the result is
of the form \sigma_i x_i y_(N-i) in a dot product for example.

Only the cblas functions support -ve stride, the gsl_vectors always
have +ve strides so this doesn't affect anything involving gsl_vector.

> Notice that the test suite in "cblas/test_rotm.c"
> tests vectors of size==1, so this problem does not
> show itself.

Hmm, yes, it would be good to extend that.

-- 
Brian Gough