Determinant (.) is a primitive dyadic operator that takes two dyadic functions for operands and produces a monadic function. Much like Inner Product for matrix products, it generalizes the matrix determinant, so that -.× computes the determinant and +.× the permanent. Determinant has been implemented in SHARP APL, NARS2000, and J; however, the J definition differs by factoring out a reduction from the definition, so that -/ .* is the matrix determinant.
Unlike the inner product operator, which performs 
arithmetic operations on square matrices of side length 
given arithmetic operands, definitions of the determinant use a super-polynomial number of evaluations, for example 
in SHARP APL's definition. Computing the permanent in particular is not believed to be possible in polynomial time, which would rule out a polynomial-time definition for any generalization of it. The specific determinant function -.× can be computed much faster (for example by LU decomposition in ), and is always handled specially for performance. Other combinations of operands may also have optimized implementations.
The determinant operator was described by Ken Iverson in "Determinant-Like Functions Produced by the Dot Operator"[1] and also implemented in SHARP APL[2] in 1982. It also appears in Iverson's later publications Rationalized APL and A Dictionary of APL.
Documentation
References
| APL built-ins [edit]
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| Primitives (Timeline) |
Functions
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| Scalar
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| Monadic
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Conjugate ∙ Negate ∙ Signum ∙ Reciprocal ∙ Magnitude ∙ Exponential ∙ Natural Logarithm ∙ Floor ∙ Ceiling ∙ Factorial ∙ Not ∙ Pi Times ∙ Roll ∙ Type ∙ Imaginary ∙ Square Root ∙ Round
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| Dyadic
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Add ∙ Subtract ∙ Times ∙ Divide ∙ Residue ∙ Power ∙ Logarithm ∙ Minimum ∙ Maximum ∙ Binomial ∙ Comparison functions ∙ Boolean functions (And, Or, Nand, Nor) ∙ GCD ∙ LCM ∙ Circular ∙ Complex ∙ Root
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| Non-Scalar
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| Structural
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Shape ∙ Reshape ∙ Tally ∙ Depth ∙ Ravel ∙ Enlist ∙ Table ∙ Catenate ∙ Reverse ∙ Rotate ∙ Transpose ∙ Raze ∙ Mix ∙ Split ∙ Enclose ∙ Nest ∙ Cut (K) ∙ Pair ∙ Link ∙ Partitioned Enclose ∙ Partition
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| Selection
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First ∙ Pick ∙ Take ∙ Drop ∙ Unique ∙ Identity ∙ Stop ∙ Select ∙ Replicate ∙ Expand ∙ Set functions (Intersection ∙ Union ∙ Without) ∙ Bracket indexing ∙ Index ∙ Cartesian Product ∙ Sort
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| Selector
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Index generator ∙ Grade ∙ Index Of ∙ Interval Index ∙ Indices ∙ Deal ∙ Prefix and suffix vectors
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| Computational
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Match ∙ Not Match ∙ Membership ∙ Find ∙ Nub Sieve ∙ Encode ∙ Decode ∙ Matrix Inverse ∙ Matrix Divide ∙ Format ∙ Execute ∙ Materialise ∙ Range
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| Operators |
Monadic
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Each ∙ Commute ∙ Constant ∙ Replicate ∙ Expand ∙ Reduce ∙ Windowed Reduce ∙ Scan ∙ Outer Product ∙ Key ∙ I-Beam ∙ Spawn ∙ Function axis ∙ Identity (Null, Ident)
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| Dyadic
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Bind ∙ Compositions (Compose, Reverse Compose, Beside, Withe, Atop, Over) ∙ Inner Product ∙ Determinant ∙ Power ∙ At ∙ Under ∙ Rank ∙ Depth ∙ Variant ∙ Stencil ∙ Cut ∙ Direct definition (operator) ∙ Identity (Lev, Dex)
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| Quad names
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Index origin ∙ Comparison tolerance ∙ Migration level ∙ Atomic vector
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