Robert Jacques wrote:
That sounds sensible. However, extensive experience in Matlab has taught
me that resorting to custom for-loop indicates you've failed to
sufficiently think in arrays. :)
Indeed, most use cases are simple enough to be handled in array
notation. I have worked with Matlab and Python and managed to come up
with array notations in many non-trivial cases as well. However, once in
a while, it just cannot be done. Typically, this happens when you have
to handle non-linear terms or high order tensorial objects.
Of course, my examples were simple enough to permit alternative
expressions, but I have encountered quite a number of cases where
I could not avoid a loop in Python. I is hard to spontaneously construct
something useful that I can describe in a few lines.
Imagine a charge density in one dimension:
rho[r]
and then compute the coulomb energy
sum(r1,r2)(rho[r1]*rho[r2]/(r1-r2))
Or an expression containing function calls
sum(i,j)(f(i)*g(j)*A[i,j]))
Ultimately, 'sum' and other reduction would actually be just one use
case. One could even use the same mechanism to construct arrays from
expressions.
auto A = array(a=0:10,b=0:20)(2*a + b%3)
(Disregard the exact syntax here...)
I will think further about this and try to come up with more specific
use cases.
Greetings,
Norbert
