Sparse Matrix: In computer programming, a matrix can be defined with a 2-dimensional array. Any array with ‘m’ columns and ‘n’ rows represents a m*n matrix. There may be a situation in which a matrix contains more number of ZERO values than NON-ZERO values. Such matrix is known as sparse matrix. When a sparse matrix is represented with 2-dimensional array, we waste lot of space to represent that matrix. For example, consider a matrix of size 100 X 100 containing only 10 non-zero elements. In this matrix, only 10 spaces are filled with non-zero values and remaining spaces of matrix are filled with zero. That means, totally we allocate 100 X 100 X 2 = 20000 bytes of space to store this integer matrix. And to access these 10 non-zero elements we have to make scanning for 10000 times.

A sparse matrix can be represented by using TWO representations, those are as follows...

• Triplet Representation
• Linked Representation

Triplet Representation:

In this representation, we consider only non-zero values along with their row and column index values. In this representation, the 0th row stores total rows, total columns and total non-zero values in the matrix.

For example, consider a matrix of size 5 X 6 containing 6 number of non-zero values. This matrix can be represented as shown in the image...

In above example matrix, there are only 6 non-zero elements ( those are 9, 8, 4, 2, 5 & 2) and matrix size is 5 X 6. We represent this matrix as shown in the above image. Here the first row in the right side table is filled with values 5, 6 & 6 which indicates that it is a sparse matrix with 5 rows, 6 columns & 6 non-zero values. Second row is filled with 0, 4, & 9 which indicates the value in the matrix at 0th row, 4th column is 9. In the same way the remaining non-zero values also follows the similar pattern.

Linked Representation:

In linked representation, we use linked list data structure to represent a sparse matrix. In this linked list, we use two different nodes namely header node and element node. Header node consists of three fields and element node consists of five fields as shown in the image.