Dmitriy, comments inline -

 On Jul 21, 2014, at 1:12 PM, Dmitriy Lyubimov <[email protected]> wrote:

> And no, i suppose it is ok to have "missing" rows even in case of
> int-keyed matrices.
>
> there's one thing that you probably should be aware in this context
> though: many algorithms don't survive empty (row-less) partitions, in
> whatever way they may come to be. Other than that, I don't feel every row
> must be present -- even if there's implied order of the rows.
>

I'm not sure if that is necessarily true. There are three operators which
break pretty badly with with missing rows.

AewScalar - operation like A + 1 is just not applied on the missing row, so
the final matrix will have 0's in place of 1s.

AewB, CbindAB - function after cogroup() throws exception if a row was
present on only one matrix. So I guess it is OK to have missing rows as
long as both A and B have the exact same missing row set. Somewhat
quirky/nuanced requirement.

These issues are other than the empty partition problem. So, if we were to
fix the above issues (I don't see a simple way to), I guess we could say
"it is ok to have missing rows even in case of int-keyed matrices." Given
the state of things, I think it is safer to change the stance. Besides,
what is the benefit/advantage of "supporting" missing rows, it is a
physical implementation detail after all.

Thanks

Reply via email to