libUFget - The UF Sparse Collection C interface

The SuiteSparse Matrix Collection ( https://sparse.tamu.edu ) (formerly known as UF Sparse Collection) is a huge collection of sparse matrices for academic research and benchmarking of algorithms such a linear equation solvers or eigenvalue solvers. The collection is normally used via a web interface or a MATLAB script which accesses the collection and download matrices by their ID or their name.

The libUFget library provides a C interface to the SuiteSparse Matrix Collection which allows to access the collection form C codes and to download the matrices as in the MATLAB interface. Furthermore, it converts the database into an SQLITE database which than can be query via the SQL language to select a set of matrices according to the requirements of the user. Using an iterator it is possible to perform benchmarks for all matrices matched by the query.

Additionally the library provides function to read the matrices into the coordinate storage format as well as function to convert them into Compressed Sparse Row (CSR) and Compressed Sparse Column (CSC) storage. All functions support 32 bit integers as well as 64 bit integers to allow even to use the largest matrices currently available in the collection and to support 64 bit integer enabled codes directly without further data manipulation.