require(mgcv)
## simulate a banded diagonal matrix
n <- 7;set.seed(8)
A <- matrix(0,n,n)
sdiag(A) <- runif(n);sdiag(A,1) <- runif(n-1)
sdiag(A,2) <- runif(n-2)
A <- crossprod(A)
## full matrix form...
bandchol(A)
chol(A) ## for comparison
## compact storage form...
B <- matrix(0,3,n)
B[1,] <- sdiag(A);B[2,1:(n-1)] <- sdiag(A,1)
B[3,1:(n-2)] <- sdiag(A,2)
bandchol(B)
Run the code above in your browser using DataLab