[SciPy-user] Obtaining factors of sparse matrices

[Bill Cochran]

I am new to scipy.  I would like to compare fill-in between a standard GEPP and
one that I have developed to schedule pivoting in parallel codes.  My matrices
are large and sparse.  In MATLAB code, I need this:

[L,U] = lu ( A )
nnz(U)

I have looked at the scipy documentation and I believe the function I am looking
for is sparse.linalg.splu (...).  I do not know what permc_spec means.  Neither
I nor Google know what a "factored_lu" object is.  And I don't understand the
instruction:  "See scipy.sparse.linalg.dsolve._superlu.dgstrf for more info." 
Neither does Google.

Any help would be appreciated.  I am kind of crunched for time and thought I'd
see if scipy lived up to the hype.  Please help scipy live up to the hype.