MATLAB: First MATLAB Build (Directly) Supporting Left Eigenvector in eig

Question

Since at least R2014A, eig has the following option, which returns both left and right eigenvectors in one command, without resorting to a second call to eig on the transpose of the original matrix.

[V,D,W] = eig(A) also produces a full matrix W whose columns are the
    corresponding left eigenvectors so that W'*A = D*W'.

Somewhat to my surprise, I discovered that this calling sequence is not supported in MATLAB R2013A, and that it only returns right eigenvectors, thereby necessitating a call to eig on A' in order to get its right eigenvectors, which are the left eigenvectors of A. I had assumed it had been in MATLAB since time immemorial (the old Fortran-based MATLAB days).

Thanks.

Answer 1

You can see in the release notes at http://de.mathworks.com/help/matlab/release-notes.html#R2014a that it was introduced in R2014a.