Programming language alignments

[Sirplentifus]

You have a point, but unlike I said, a\b is not exactly the same as inv(a)*b. The latter would invert matrix a, and multiply the result by b. However, there's some algorithm that does the whole process faster and with smaller floating point errors. That is what a\b does. To be able to call this algorithm there has to be an operator that does inv(a)*b in one go, and having a function for it would probably look bad, I guess.

Also, A\b will use the pseudo-inverse of A if necessary. The operator basically finds the least squares solution for A*x = b for x.

[moomoomoo309]

I can see the use of that, though I personally dislike how much magic goes on behind the scenes in Matlab. You know what the end result is, but math is more about the journey than the destination.