Re: Threading over matrices
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg90753] Re: Threading over matrices
- From: yatesd at mac.com
- Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2008 05:56:35 -0400 (EDT)
- References: <g64487$djo$1@smc.vnet.net>
The reason that Cos, Sin etc work is because they have Attribute Listable. (You can see this by typing Attributes[Cos], etc.) Your own custom functions, by default, do not. (Nor does Greater (>) which explains why x>y etc do not work). There are at least two relatively easy ways to create a function with Attribute Listable. (1) Clear[f]; SetAttributes[f,Listable]; f[x_,y_]:=If[x>y,1/x,x-y] (2) Use a pure function. Function[{x,y},If[x>y,1/x,x-y],{Listable}][x,y] or when you don't know how many arguments will be passed Function[Null, Greater[##],{Listable}][x,y] or if you need to reuse the function you can do f= Function[Null, Greater[##],{Listable}]; f[x,y] (The trick of using Null as the first argument in Function in order to use # (or #2 or ## as required) in the definition, followed by the list of Attributes is not documented anywhere that I could find, but is a very useful trick.) Regards, Derek