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+++ b/scripts/sparse/colperm.m
@@ -0,0 +1,30 @@
+## Copyright (C) 2004 David Bateman & Andy Adler
+##
+## This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
+## it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
+## the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
+## (at your option) any later version.
+##
+## This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
+## but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
+## MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
+## GNU General Public License for more details.
+##
+## You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
+## along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
+## Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA  02111-1307  USA
+
+## -*- texinfo -*-
+## @deftypefn {Function File} {@var{p} =} colperm (@var{s})
+## Returns the column permutations such that the columns of
+## @code{@var{s} (:, @var{p})} are ordered in terms of increase number
+## of non-zero elements. If @var{s} is symmetric, then @var{p} is chosen
+## such that @code{@var{s} (@var{p}, @var{p})} orders the rows and
+## columns with increasing number of non zeros elements.
+## @end deftypefn
+
+function p = colperm (s)
+  [i, j] = spfind (s);
+  idx = find (diff ([j; Inf]) != 0);
+  [dummy, p] = sort (idx - [0; idx(1:(end-1))]);
+endfunction