Vectors are defined by a gsl_vector structure which describes a
slice of a block. Different vectors can be created which point to the
same block. A vector slice is a set of equally-spaced elements of an
area of memory.
The gsl_vector structure contains five components, the
size, the stride, a pointer to the memory where the elements
are stored, data, a pointer to the block owned by the vector,
block, if any, and an ownership flag, owner. The structure
is very simple and looks like this,
typedef struct
{
size_t size;
size_t stride;
double * data;
gsl_block * block;
int owner;
} gsl_vector;
The size is simply the number of vector elements. The range of
valid indices runs from 0 to size-1. The stride is the
step-size from one element to the next in physical memory, measured in
units of the appropriate datatype. The pointer data gives the
location of the first element of the vector in memory. The pointer
block stores the location of the memory block in which the vector
elements are located (if any). If the vector owns this block then the
owner field is set to one and the block will be deallocated when the
vector is freed. If the vector points to a block owned by another
object then the owner field is zero and any underlying block will not be
deallocated with the vector.
The functions for allocating and accessing vectors are defined in gsl_vector.h