PHP Matrix Math Library - PHP Matrix Arithmetic Library package blog

Introduction to Matrices

Nowadays, matrices became an inescapable tool to solve a large set of scientific problems. From mathematics to physics and even IT, matrices have widely proved their efficiency.

Nevertheless, despite their essential importance, many people are not able to fully exploit all the possibilities that this great math tool offers. Due to this this circumstance there is an opportunity for matrix manipulation package programmers.

Sure enough steadfast development of this sector allows human species to go beyond his biological borders, by automating some calculations, which machines perform in a significantly faster and more precise way.

Despite all that, there still are some gaps to fill in before being able to completely master these new tools which have an essential importance. The complexity and the cost of different algorithms for solving problems constitute a major brake in computer programming.

As for matrixes, despite they constitute one of the most important subjects of research of computer scientists and others from many domains, only few programming language support them actually in a native way.

To use them it varies from a language to another. Only a few programmers with good experience have created some libraries for calculates, some certainly still limited by the size of RAM of calculator capacity of our computer tools.

Matrices and PHP

PHP is a very rich language which has a very active programmers community. Moreover PHP is an absolutely free tool. However, like many other languages it doesn’t support matrix calculations natively.

We must then use some hacks in order to make available to everybody a library, maybe limited and with some imperfections, but when we think about it, we could maybe help the language to not be on the fringe of matrix civilization.

The PHP Matrix Class

This Matrix class package version 1.0.0 is not a ambitious project to the point of being an absolutely optimized tool. Comments about this matter will really be appreciated.

The Matrix class allows handling all the types of matrix with real coefficients. This library permits to do all the basic calculations on matrix and even more complex, like Determinant calculation, the search of eigenvalues and eigenvectors. It also has lot of other assets which only its usage may reveal.

This package is a hack, but an intelligent hack for some calculations with matrices in the PHP language. More of this type of packages must be created to reinforce PHP’s position and its progress in a world where it widely proved its usefulness.

However, one single head couldn’t test all the bugs, because not all the users will use it in the same way. So the feedback for reporting bugs, programming errors and also improvement suggestions are welcome.

However, you must keep in mind that if you wish to integrate this class in your applications, you must do some systematic security checks for the library’s. Its development was initially more centred on the usefulness of the functions than on their security and the checking of input values was minimal. NeverTrust User should be your dad.

Download the PHP Matrix Library

You can download and install this class package in a ZIP archive or install it using the composer tool following the instructions in the package page download tab.

For more information see the package documentation available in French and also in English.