Error calculating matrix determinant of matrix in MATLAB

Question

I have this matrix

A1 = [7.4011 9.8999 1.9990; 7.4011 9.8988 1.9990; 7.4011 9.8999 1.9990]

A1 =
      7.4011   9.8999   1.9990
      7.4011   9.8988   1.9990
      7.4011   9.8999   1.9990

but when I execute the instruction det(A1) I get the following error:

error: det: invalid dense matrix type

What is happening?

I tried looking in the web about this error but I have not been able to find anything.

Thanks

Answer 1

Well, I recommend you to download the latest Octave version on http://www.gnu.org/software/octave/download.html, as said @WarrenWeckesser. It would be a issue of that old version you used.

I just installed Octave-3.6.1-mingw + octaveforge pkgs for Windows (http://wiki.octave.org/Octave_for_Windows), and it functioned perfectly! With det(A1):

ans = 0

Since at least two lines on that matrix are equals, the result determinant must be zero!