Algorithm (Workflow)

The function PLnorm is designed to normalize a vector list and optionally return the lengths of these vectors. It is part of the SolidGeometry library and was introduced by Tim Lueth. The function is considered obsolete as of July 20, 2025, and users are encouraged to use normr and vecnormr instead.

Input Parameters

• PL: A vector list (matrix) where each row represents a vector that needs to be normalized.

Output Results

• NL: A normalized vector list where each vector has been scaled to have a unit length.
• DL: A list of lengths of the vectors in the input list PL. This is only calculated if the function is called with two output arguments.

Algorithm Explanation

The function begins by normalizing the input vector list PL using the normr function, which scales each vector to have a unit length. This result is stored in NL.

If the function is called with two output arguments, it calculates the lengths of the vectors in PL using the vecnormr function. This is done by first computing the difference between each vector and its subsequent vector using circshift(PL,-1), which shifts the rows of PL circularly. The lengths are then stored in DL.

The original code snippet included a commented-out loop that manually calculated the lengths and normalized vectors, but this has been replaced by the more efficient normr and vecnormr functions.

The function is straightforward and does not include any switch conditions or additional cases.