ECHELON Function

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ECHELON Function

reduces a matrix to row-echelon normal form

ECHELON( matrix)

where matrix is a numeric matrix or literal.

The ECHELON function uses elementary row operations to reduce a matrix to row-echelon normal form as in the following example (Graybill 1969, p. 286):

      a={3  6  9,
         1  2  5,
         2  4 10};
      e=echelon(a);

The resulting matrix is

                E             3 rows      3 cols    (numeric)

                                1         2         0
                                0         0         1
                                0         0         0

If the argument is a square matrix, then the row-echelon normal form can be obtained from the Hermite normal form by rearranging rows that are all zeros.

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