This paper investigates symbolic algorithmic analysis of rectangular hybrid systems. To deal with the symbolic reachability problem, a restricted constraint system called hybrid zone is formalized for the representation and manipulation of rectangular automata state-spaces. Hybrid zones are proved to be closed over symbolic reachability operations of rectangular hybrid systems. They are also applied to model-checking procedures for verifying some important classes of timed computation tree logic formulas. To represent hybrid zones, a data structure called difference constraint matrix is defined.These enable us to deal with the symbolic algorithmic analysis of rectangular hybrid systems in an efficient way.