The characters of ORDER define which axes the three successive rotations are about. A typical value is 'ZXZ', indicating that RMAT is to become the direction cosine matrix corresponding to rotations of the reference frame through PHI radians about the old Z-axis, followed by THETA radians about the resulting X-axis, then PSI radians about the resulting Z-axis.
The axis names can be any of the following, in any order or combination: X, Y, Z, uppercase or lowercase, 1, 2, 3. Normal axis labelling/numbering conventions apply; the xyz (=123) triad is right-handed. Thus, the 'ZXZ' example given above could be written 'zxz' or '313' (or even 'ZxZ' or '3xZ'). ORDER is terminated by length or by the first unrecognized character.
Fewer than three rotations are acceptable, in which case the later angle arguments are ignored. If all rotations are zero, the identity matrix is produced.