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3.2 Object Sizes

The following functions allow you to determine the size of a variable or expression. These functions are defined for all objects. They return -1 when the operation doesn't make sense. For example, Octave's data structure type doesn't have rows or columns, so the rows and columns functions return -1 for structure arguments.

Built-in Function: ndims (a)

Returns the number of dimensions of array a. For any array, the result will always be larger than or equal to 2. Trailing singleton dimensions are not counted.

Built-in Function: columns (a)

Return the number of columns of a.

See also size, numel, rows, length, isscalar, isvector, and ismatrix

Built-in Function: rows (a)

Return the number of rows of a.

See also size, numel, columns, length, isscalar, isvector, ismatrix

Built-in Function: numel (a)

Returns the number of elements in the object a.

See also size

Built-in Function: length (a)

Return the `length' of the object a. For matrix objects, the length is the number of rows or columns, whichever is greater (this odd definition is used for compatibility with Matlab).

Built-in Function: size (a, n)

Return the number rows and columns of a.

With one input argument and one output argument, the result is returned in a row vector. If there are multiple output arguments, the number of rows is assigned to the first, and the number of columns to the second, etc. For example,

size ([1, 2; 3, 4; 5, 6])
     => [ 3, 2 ]

[nr, nc] = size ([1, 2; 3, 4; 5, 6])
     => nr = 3
     => nc = 2

If given a second argument, size will return the size of the corresponding dimension. For example

size ([1, 2; 3, 4; 5, 6], 2)
     => 2

returns the number of columns in the given matrix.

See also numel

Built-in Function: isempty (a)

Return 1 if a is an empty matrix (either the number of rows, or the number of columns, or both are zero). Otherwise, return 0.

Built-in Function: sizeof (val)

Return the size of val in bytes

Built-in Function: size_equal (a, b, ...)

Return true if the dimensions of all arguments agree. Trailing singleton dimensions are ignored.

See also size, numel

Built-in Function: squeeze (x)

Remove singleton dimensions from x and return the result. Note that for compatibility with Matlab, all objects have a minimum of two dimensions and row vectors are left unchanged.