:orphan:
# MatStencil
Data structure (C struct) for storing information about rows and columns of a matrix as indexed on an associated grid. These are arguments to `MatSetStencil()` and `MatSetBlockStencil()` 
## Synopsis
```
typedef struct {
  PetscInt k, j, i, c;
} MatStencil;
```



## Notes
The i,j, and k represent the logical coordinates over the entire grid (for 2 and 1 dimensional problems the k and j entries are ignored).
The c represents the the degrees of freedom at each grid point (the dof argument to `DMDASetDOF()`). If dof is 1 then this entry is ignored.

For stencil access to vectors see `DMDAVecGetArray()`, `DMDAVecGetArrayF90()`.

For staggered grids, see `DMStagStencil`


## Fortran Note
See `MatSetValuesStencil()` for details.


## See Also
 [](ch_matrices), `Mat`, `MatSetValuesStencil()`, `MatSetStencil()`, `MatSetValuesBlockedStencil()`, `DMDAVecGetArray()`, `DMDAVecGetArrayF90()`,
`DMStagStencil`

## Level
beginner

## Location
<A HREF="PETSC_DOC_OUT_ROOT_PLACEHOLDER/include/petscmat.h.html#MatStencil">include/petscmat.h</A>


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