In linear algebra multiplication of a scalar and a matrix can change order: aM=Ma, where a is a scalar and M is a r by c matrix. In case of four matrices K,L,M,N the product KLMN is the same as LMNK if the product LMN is a scalar. However, Maple does not allow the forementioned change of order, because the program only checks whether adjacent matrices are conformable. How can this change of order be done in Maple? The issue is that I want to check my work using Maple. TIA Harry ps. is there a brief notation in Maple for scalar by matrix multiplication?

I am struggling with the new LinearAlgebra package and I want a procedure for the vec operator (just stacking the colums of matrix r by c into a (r*c) by 1 columnvector. For only extracting two columns the following commands work well: A := Matrix(5, 5, symbol = a); Matrix([[Column(A, [1])], [Column(A, [1])]]); but there must be a simple procedure for doing this for a converting a large matrix into a column vector. Any help would be appreciated. kind regards, Harry Garst