st: Extracting a scalar from a matrix

["Olivier Paradis-Beland" <obeland@ecn.ulaval.ca>]

I have a matrix (vector) of which I want to extract the first element as a scalar.
 
What I did is : matrix  alpha = beta[1,1]
 
The problem is that I need to use the extracted element (alpha) as a scalar rather than as a matrix.
 
Does anyone can help ?
 
Olivier

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