Easiest way to perform modular matrix inversion with Python?

Question

I\'d like to take the modular inverse of a matrix like [[1,2],[3,4]] mod 7 in Python. I\'ve looked at numpy (which does matrix inversion but not modular matrix inversion) an

Answer 1

A hackish trick which works when rounding errors aren't an issue:

• find the regular inverse (may have non-integer entries), and the determinant (an integer), both implemented in numpy
• multiply the inverse by the determinant, and round to integers (hacky)
• now multiply everything by the determinant's multiplicative inverse (modulo your modulus, code below)
• do entrywise mod by your modulus

A less hackish way is to actually implement gaussian elimination. Here's my code using Gaussian elimination, which I wrote for my own purposes (rounding errors were an issue for me). q is the modulus, which is not necessarily prime.

def generalizedEuclidianAlgorithm(a, b):
    if b > a:
        return generalizedEuclidianAlgorithm(b,a);
    elif b == 0:
        return (1, 0);
    else:
        (x, y) = generalizedEuclidianAlgorithm(b, a % b);
        return (y, x - (a / b) * y)

def inversemodp(a, p):
    a = a % p
    if (a == 0):
        print "a is 0 mod p"
        return None
    if a > 1 and p % a == 0:
        return None
    (x,y) = generalizedEuclidianAlgorithm(p, a % p);
    inv = y % p
    assert (inv * a) % p == 1
    return inv

def identitymatrix(n):
    return [[long(x == y) for x in range(0, n)] for y in range(0, n)]

def inversematrix(matrix, q):
    n = len(matrix)
    A = np.matrix([[ matrix[j, i] for i in range(0,n)] for j in range(0, n)], dtype = long)
    Ainv = np.matrix(identitymatrix(n), dtype = long)
    for i in range(0, n):
        factor = inversemodp(A[i,i], q)
        if factor is None:
             raise ValueError("TODO: deal with this case")
        A[i] = A[i] * factor % q
        Ainv[i] = Ainv[i] * factor % q
        for j in range(0, n):
            if (i != j):
                factor = A[j, i]
                A[j] = (A[j] - factor * A[i]) % q
                Ainv[j] = (Ainv[j] - factor * Ainv[i]) % q
    return Ainv

EDIT: as commenters point out, there are some cases this algorithm fails. It's slightly nontrivial to fix, and I don't have time nowadays. Back then it worked for random matrices in my case (the moduli were products of large primes). Basically, the first non-zero entry might not be relatively prime to the modulus. The prime case is easy since you can search for a different row and swap. In the non-prime case, I think it could be that all leading entries aren't relatively prime so you have to combine them