Error in one LAPACK example

[Al-Badri__Mohamed_Al]

Hi, 

I've located an error in one of your FORTRAN 77 interface to the LAPACK Single Value Decomposition routines (DGESVD). This is located in https://software.intel.com/sites/products/documentation/doclib/mkl_sa/11/mkl_lapack_examples/dgesvd.htm 

The following two lines must be added. (1) in variable declaration and (2) just before calling DGESVD. 

(1)

DOUBLE PRECISION Asvd( size(A,1), size(A,2) )

(2)

Asvd = A

Best wishes,

Mohamed Ali Al-Badri

[mecej4]

The modifications that you suggest are needed only if the original matrix A has to be preserved for some other use after the call to ?GESVD(). The description of the calling sequence at http://www.netlib.org/lapack/explore-html/d1/d7e/group__double_g_esing_ga84fdf22a62b12ff364621e4713ce02f2.html (or in the MKL documentation) states quite clearly that A may be overwritten, and in what way. 

At the time that the Lapack library was designed and implemented, computer memory was a valuable resource and programs were written in such a way that the consumption of scratch space was kept low. From that perspective, what you call an "error" is, instead, a "feature", and you should not expect any corrections to be made to either the Lapack codes or to the examples. Once in a while, a new version of a Lapack routine may be added when a new algorithm is created or a much needed additional capability is to be provided, but changing an existing routine would break too many existing codes that depend on the stability of the Lapack interfaces.