'Returns a copy of column j of the matrix, as an (m x 1) sparse
matrix (column vector).'

def getcol(self, j):

    from .csc import csc_matrix
    n = self.shape[1]
    if (j < 0):
        j += n
    if ((j < 0) or (j >= n)):
        raise IndexError('index    out    of    bounds')
    col_selector = csc_matrix(([1], [[j], [0]]), shape=(n, 1), dtype=self.dtype)
    return (self * col_selector)
