Packed Array Angst
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg20962] Packed Array Angst
- From: Mark Reeve <msreeve at earthlink.net>
- Date: Wed, 1 Dec 1999 01:50:29 -0500 (EST)
- Organization: EarthLink Network, Inc.
- Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com
Hello,
This is mainly a question to WRI personnel, though I'd appreciate any
thoughts anyone else might have as well.
I've been experimenting with packed arrays and have observed that a
number of common functional programming constructs force unpacking, thus
greatly lessening the utility of packed arrays. At the latest
Developers' Conference Tom Wickham-Jones mentioned that he was working
on upgrades to allow the pattern matcher to work better with packed
arrays and perhaps the problems I'm encountering are already on the list
for generalization.
For example: Transpose, Inner, Outer, and MapThread. The latter is
particularly annoying. I should clarify that for a 2-D array (and
possibly for higher-dimensions as well), Transpose[arr], works just fine
and preserves packing. But if the user specifies a permutation vector,
even the trivial Transpose[arr2d,{1,2}], unpacking occurs.
Another nasty thing is that if "a" and "b" are two packed arrays, the
composite c={a,b} is not, although c[[1]] and c[[2]] are still each
packed.
Has anyone found a way around some of these limitations? A generic
replacement for MapThread which preserves packing? I have experimented
with several forms but have so far only run into further limitations.
-Mark