For consistency all memory is allocated through a gsl_block
structure. The structure contains two components, the size of an area of
memory and a pointer to the memory. The gsl_block structure looks
like this,
typedef struct
{
size_t size;
double * data;
} gsl_block;
Vectors and matrices are made by slicing an underlying block. A slice is a set of elements formed from an initial offset and a combination of indices and step-sizes. In the case of a matrix the step-size for the column index represents the row-length. The step-size for a vector is known as the stride.
The functions for allocating and deallocating blocks are defined in `gsl_block.h'