Inversion of general tridiagonal matrices

In the current work, the authors present a symbolic algorithm for finding the inverse of any general nonsingular tridiagonal matrix. The algorithm is mainly based on the work presented in [Y. Huang, W.F. McColl, Analytic inversion of general tridiagonal matrices, J. Phys. A 30 (1997) 7919-7933] and [M.E.A. El-Mikkawy, A fast algorithm for evaluating nth order tridiagonal determinants, J. Comput. Appl. Math. 166 (2004) 581-584]. It removes all cases where the numeric algorithm in [Y. Huang, W.F. McColl, Analytic inversion of general tridiagonal matrices, J. Phys. A 30 (1997) 7919-7933] fails. The symbolic algorithm is suited for implementation using Computer Algebra Systems (CAS) such as MACSYMA, MAPLE and MATHEMATICA. An illustrative example is given. (C) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.