#### A.1.6 Sparse Matrices in Oct-Files ¶

There are three classes of sparse objects that are of interest to the user.

`SparseMatrix`

  A double precision sparse matrix class

`SparseComplexMatrix`

  A complex sparse matrix class

`SparseBoolMatrix`

  A boolean sparse matrix class

All of these classes inherit from the `Sparse<T>` template class, and so all have similar capabilities and usage. The `Sparse<T>` class was based on Octave’s `Array<T>` class and users familiar with Octave’s `Array` classes will be comfortable with the use of the sparse classes.

The sparse classes will not be entirely described in this section, due to their similarity with the existing `Array` classes. However, there are a few differences due the nature of sparse objects, and these will be described. First, although it is fundamentally possible to have N-dimensional sparse objects, the Octave sparse classes do not allow them at this time; All instances of the sparse classes must be 2-dimensional. This means that `SparseMatrix` is actually more similar to Octave’s `Matrix` class than it is to the `NDArray` class.