# C Program to multiply two matrices

Last updated on July 27, 2020

The following is a C program to multiply two matrices:

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 /****************************************** Program to multiply two matrices ******************************************/ #include // include stdio.h #define ROW1 2 #define COL1 2 #define ROW2 COL1 #define COL2 3 int main() { int i, j, arr1[ROW1][COL1], arr2[ROW2][COL2], arr3[ROW1][COL2]; printf("Enter first matrix (%d x %d): \n", ROW1, COL1); // input first matrix for(i = 0; i < ROW1; i++) { for(j = 0; j < COL1; j++) { scanf("%d", &arr1[i][j]); } } printf("\nEnter second matrix (%d x %d): \n", ROW2, COL2); // input second matrix for(i = 0; i < ROW2; i++) { for(j = 0; j < COL2; j++) { scanf("%d", &arr2[i][j]); } } printf("\narr1 * arr2 = "); // multiply two matrices for(i = 0; i < ROW1; i++) { for(j = 0; j < COL2; j++) { arr3[i][j] = 0; for(int k = 0; k < COL1; k++) { arr3[i][j] += arr1[i][k] * arr2[k][j]; } } printf("\n"); } // print the result for(i = 0; i < ROW2; i++) { for(j = 0; j < COL2; j++) { printf("%d ", arr3[i][j]); } printf("\n"); } // signal to operating system everything works fine return 0; } 

Expected Output:

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Enter first matrix (2 x 2): 2 3 4 5 Enter second matrix (2 x 3): 6 4 2 7 8 9 arr1 * arr2 = 33 32 31 59 56 53 

## How it works #

Two matrices can be multiplied only if the number of columns in the first matrix is equal to the number of rows in the second matrix.

Let, A be the matrix of size 2x3 and B be the matrix of size 3x2, Then, A * B is given by:

$\left(\begin{array}{ccc}a & b & c \\d & e & f\end{array}\right) * \left(\begin{array}{cc}g & h\\k &l \\o & p \end{array}\right) = \left(\begin{array}{cc}a*g + b * k + c * o &a*h + b * l + c * p \\d*g + e * k + f * o &d*h + e * l + f * p\end{array}\right)$

In general, If matrix A is of size m x n and B is of size n x p, then the size of matrix A * B will be m x p.

Here is how the program works:

1. The first for loop (lines 20-26) asks the user to input the first matrix.
2. The second for loop (lines 31-37) asks the user to input the second matrix.
3. The third for loop (lines 42-55) multiplies the matrices.
4. The fourth for loop (lines 58-65) prints the result of matrix multiplication.

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