— Function File: poly (A)
— Function File: poly (x)

If A is a square N-by-N matrix, poly (A) is the row vector of the coefficients of det (z * eye (N) - A), the characteristic polynomial of A. For example, the following code finds the eigenvalues of A which are the roots of poly (A).

          roots(poly(eye(3)))
          ⇒ 1.00001 + 0.00001i
          ⇒ 1.00001 - 0.00001i
          ⇒ 0.99999 + 0.00000i

In fact, all three eigenvalues are exactly 1 which emphasizes that for numerical performance the eig function should be used to compute eigenvalues.

If x is a vector, poly (x) is a vector of the coefficients of the polynomial whose roots are the elements of x. That is, if c is a polynomial, then the elements of d = roots (poly (c)) are contained in c. The vectors c and d are not identical, however, due to sorting and numerical errors.

See also: roots, eig.

— Function File: polyout (c)
— Function File: polyout (c, x)
— Function File: str = polyout (...)

Write formatted polynomial

             c(x) = c(1) * x^n + ... + c(n) x + c(n+1)

and return it as a string or write it to the screen (if nargout is zero). x defaults to the string "s".

See also: polyreduce.

— Function File: polyreduce (c)

Reduce a polynomial coefficient vector to a minimum number of terms by stripping off any leading zeros.

See also: polyout.