GNU Scientific Library – Reference Manual: Aliasing of arrays

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### 2.11 Aliasing of arrays

The library assumes that arrays, vectors and matrices passed as modifiable arguments are not aliased and do not overlap with each other. This removes the need for the library to handle overlapping memory regions as a special case, and allows additional optimizations to be used. If overlapping memory regions are passed as modifiable arguments then the results of such functions will be undefined. If the arguments will not be modified (for example, if a function prototype declares them as `const` arguments) then overlapping or aliased memory regions can be safely used.