Data Types

Constants

PI is the only predefined constant within the math engine. All other constants are user-defined. Constants are case sensitive.

Matrices

A matrix is a two-dimensional array. It is a collection of vectors containing the same number of elements. The dimensions of a matrix are described as m x n, pronounced "m by n". m refers to the number of rows (values read horizontally) and n refers to the number of columns (values read vertically).

An example of a matrix is:

{ {1, 2, 3, 5}, {-1, -1, -2, -3} }

which is a 2 x 4 matrix and written as:

Figure 1.

In the previous example it could be said the matrix has two row vectors of four elements, or four column vectors of two elements.

If the matrix has the same number of rows as columns, the matrix is a square matrix. There are some functions that require a square matrix.

Scalars

Scalars are numbers that denote a magnitude without direction. Examples of a scalar value are 11, -4.5, and the value of PI.

Strings & String Arrays

Strings contain one or more alphanumeric characters, punctuation marks, and other special symbols. If the elements in a vector are strings, it is referred to as a string array. An example of a string is:

"This is a test"

An example of a string array is:

{"This", "is", "a", "test"}

Addition, +, and equality, ==, are the only mathematical operations that can be performed on a string or string array. Concatenation performs a similar, but not identical, operation.

Vectors

A vector is a one-dimensional array. Examples of a vector are:

{2, 4}
{3, -16, 8.5}
{1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10}
1:5:1