1namespace Eigen {
2
3/** \eigenManualPage TopicStorageOrders Storage orders
4
5There are two different storage orders for matrices and two-dimensional arrays: column-major and row-major.
6This page explains these storage orders and how to specify which one should be used.
7
8\eigenAutoToc
9
10
11\section TopicStorageOrdersIntro Column-major and row-major storage
12
13The entries of a matrix form a two-dimensional grid. However, when the matrix is stored in memory, the entries
14have to somehow be laid out linearly. There are two main ways to do this, by row and by column.
15
16We say that a matrix is stored in \b row-major order if it is stored row by row. The entire first row is
17stored first, followed by the entire second row, and so on. Consider for example the matrix
18
19\f[
20A = \begin{bmatrix}
218 & 2 & 2 & 9 \\
229 & 1 & 4 & 4 \\
233 & 5 & 4 & 5
24\end{bmatrix}.
25\f]
26
27If this matrix is stored in row-major order, then the entries are laid out in memory as follows:
28
29\code 8 2 2 9 9 1 4 4 3 5 4 5 \endcode
30
31On the other hand, a matrix is stored in \b column-major order if it is stored column by column, starting with
32the entire first column, followed by the entire second column, and so on. If the above matrix is stored in
33column-major order, it is laid out as follows:
34
35\code 8 9 3 2 1 5 2 4 4 9 4 5 \endcode
36
37This example is illustrated by the following Eigen code. It uses the PlainObjectBase::data() function, which
38returns a pointer to the memory location of the first entry of the matrix.
39
40<table class="example">
41<tr><th>Example</th><th>Output</th></tr>
42<tr><td>
43\include TopicStorageOrders_example.cpp
44</td>
45<td>
46\verbinclude TopicStorageOrders_example.out
47</td></tr></table>
48
49
50\section TopicStorageOrdersInEigen Storage orders in Eigen
51
52The storage order of a matrix or a two-dimensional array can be set by specifying the \c Options template
53parameter for Matrix or Array. As \ref TutorialMatrixClass explains, the %Matrix class template has six
54template parameters, of which three are compulsory (\c Scalar, \c RowsAtCompileTime and \c ColsAtCompileTime)
55and three are optional (\c Options, \c MaxRowsAtCompileTime and \c MaxColsAtCompileTime). If the \c Options
56parameter is set to \c RowMajor, then the matrix or array is stored in row-major order; if it is set to 
57\c ColMajor, then it is stored in column-major order. This mechanism is used in the above Eigen program to
58specify the storage order.
59
60If the storage order is not specified, then Eigen defaults to storing the entry in column-major. This is also
61the case if one of the convenience typedefs (\c Matrix3f, \c ArrayXXd, etc.) is used.
62
63Matrices and arrays using one storage order can be assigned to matrices and arrays using the other storage
64order, as happens in the above program when \c Arowmajor is initialized using \c Acolmajor. Eigen will reorder
65the entries automatically. More generally, row-major and column-major matrices can be mixed in an expression
66as we want.
67
68
69\section TopicStorageOrdersWhich Which storage order to choose?
70
71So, which storage order should you use in your program? There is no simple answer to this question; it depends
72on your application. Here are some points to keep in mind:
73
74  - Your users may expect you to use a specific storage order. Alternatively, you may use other libraries than
75    Eigen, and these other libraries may expect a certain storage order. In these cases it may be easiest and
76    fastest to use this storage order in your whole program.
77  - Algorithms that traverse a matrix row by row will go faster when the matrix is stored in row-major order
78    because of better data locality. Similarly, column-by-column traversal is faster for column-major
79    matrices. It may be worthwhile to experiment a bit to find out what is faster for your particular
80    application.
81  - The default in Eigen is column-major. Naturally, most of the development and testing of the Eigen library
82    is thus done with column-major matrices. This means that, even though we aim to support column-major and
83    row-major storage orders transparently, the Eigen library may well work best with column-major matrices.
84
85*/
86}
87