# Why column major?

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/why-column-major/24374>\
**Category:** General Usage\
**Tags:** question, array, linearalgebra, column-major\
**Created:** [May 19, 2019, 10:49am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/why-column-major/24374 "2019-05-19T10:49:56Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 4

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**Author:** ![stevengj](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/stevengj/32/71_2.png) [@stevengj](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/stevengj)\
**Post date:** [May 19, 2019, 1:17pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/why-column-major/24374/4 "2019-05-19T13:17:32Z")

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As I understand it, it was mainly historical precedent, driven by the fact that most linear-algebra libraries (LAPACK etc.) are column-major (because Fortran is column-major, and hence Matlab is column-major), though it would have been possible to work around this with judicious use of transposition.

It’s been discussed before, e.g. [https://groups.google.com/d/msg/julia-users/GkvDunqE0ww/2gIDmA5cAAAJ](https://groups.google.com/d/msg/julia-users/GkvDunqE0ww/2gIDmA5cAAAJ)

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