Explicit Integration of the Full Symmetric Toda Hierarchy and the Sorting Property

We give an explicit formula for the solution to the initial value problem of the full symmetric Toda hierarchy. The formula is obtained by the orthogonalization procedure of Szeg\"{o}, and is also interpreted as a consequence of the QR factorization method of Symes \cite{symes}. The sorting property of the dynamics is also proved for the case of a generic symmetric matrix in the sense described in the text, and generalizations of tridiagonal formulae are given for the case of matrices with $2M+1$ nonzero diagonals.