Dear Tamas,

Thanks for your suggestion. 

After seeing your post, I spent some time trying to know the difference 
between
symbols and strings. This stackoverflow post 
<http://stackoverflow.com/questions/23480722/what-is-a-symbol-in-julia> was 
helpful. I think both symbols 
and strings are fine for Matrix Depot, as you said this is more of a matter 
of taste.
But I would like to draw an analogy bewteen matrixdepot and readtable. See 
for example:

df = readtable("data.csv",header = false)
A = matrixdepot("hilb", 3, 4)

where "hilb" is really just a name of a matrix data, so string for me is 
more natural. 

Thanks,

Weijian

On Tuesday, 25 November 2014 11:56:32 UTC, Tamas Papp wrote:
>
> Hi, 
>
> This is a great idea. 
>
> Just a cosmetic suggestion: given that Julia has symbols, would it make 
> sense to use them (eg :hilb, :cauchy) instead of strings for selection? 
> Strings are popular in S/R/S-plus for this purpose, but the syntax of 
> Julia is more lispy so symbols may feel more natural (but this is, of 
> course, a matter of taste). 
>
> Best, 
>
> Tamas 
>
> On Tue, Nov 25 2014, Weijian Zhang <[email protected] <javascript:>> 
> wrote: 
>
> > Hello, 
> > 
> > We are designing a test matrix collection for Julia. The idea is to use 
> a 
> > single function to call many different test matrices. It has some 
> > similarity to MATLAB's gallery function but is more powerful. 
> > 
> > The function name is matrixdepot. Every matrix in the collection is 
> > represented by a string, for example, the Cauchy matrix is represented 
> by 
> > "cauchy" and the Hilbert matrix is represented by "hilb". 
> > 
> > The properties of the matrices in the collection are also symbolized by 
> > strings. For example, the class of the symmetric matrices is symbolized 
> by 
> > "symmetric". 
> > 
> >    - 
> > 
> >    matrixdepot(matrix_name, p1, p2, ...) returns a matrix specified by 
> the 
> >    query string matrix_name.  p1, p2, ... are input parameters depending 
> on 
> >    matrix_name. 
> >    - 
> > 
> >    matrixdepot(matrix_name) returns the parameter options and the 
> >    properties of matrix_name. 
> >    - 
> > 
> >    matrixdepot(property_name) returns a list of matrices with the 
> property 
> >    property_name. 
> > 
> > 
> > The main features are listed in the file matrixdepot_doc.html. All the 
> code 
> > is provided in the zip file. 
> > 
> > Please let us know if you have any suggestions or any features you think 
> we 
> > should add. 
> > 
> > Thanks, 
> > 
> > Weijian 
>

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