About Working With Arrays
When you evaluate a large array, only the first 12 rows and columns are initially displayed. The presence of additional elements in the array is indicated by three dots that appear on the top-left corner or the bottom-right corner of the array. You can resize the array to view hidden elements and you can view the row and column indices. Arrays begin with index 0 by default. You can change the index by adjusting the built-in ORIGIN variable.
• For ORIGIN=0, the last index of a vector is length(v) -1.
• A range variable that starts with a value greater than ORIGIN, or ends with a value less than the length of the array, does not cover every element of the array.
• The value of ORIGIN dictates which array elements can exist. For example, using the default settings, there cannot be an array element –1. If you evaluate the expression M-1, an error message appears.
Additional Information
You can think of the ORIGIN system variable as a hidden argument to some functions and operators. The value of ORIGIN causes such functions and operators to return different results.
The following functions explicitly require the specification of a row or column index:
The following functions do not require the specification of a row or column index, but are nonetheless affected by the value of ORIGIN:
• The antisymmetric tensor function ε.
The following operators require the specification of a row or column index, and their result is affected by the value of ORIGIN:
• Vector and matrix operators—The column, row, and index operators:
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