### Name: chol
### Title: The Choleski Decomposition
### Aliases: chol chol.default
### Keywords: algebra array

### ** Examples

( m <- matrix(c(5,1,1,3),2,2) )
( cm <- chol(m) )
t(cm) %*% cm  #-- = 'm'
crossprod(cm)  #-- = 'm'

# now for something positive semi-definite
x <- matrix(c(1:5, (1:5)^2), 5, 2)
x <- cbind(x, x[, 1] + 3*x[, 2])
m <- crossprod(x)
qr(m)$rank # is 2, as it should be

# chol() may fail, depending on numerical rounding:
# chol() unlike qr() does not use a tolerance.
try(chol(m))

(Q <- chol(m, pivot = TRUE)) # NB wrong rank here - see Warning section.
## we can use this by
pivot <- attr(Q, "pivot")
oo <- order(pivot)
t(Q[, oo]) %*% Q[, oo] # recover m

## now for a non-positive-definite matrix
( m <- matrix(c(5,-5,-5,3),2,2) )
try(chol(m))  # fails
try(chol(m, LINPACK=TRUE))   # fails
(Q <- chol(m, pivot = TRUE)) # warning
crossprod(Q)  # not equal to m