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Re: Functions of Arrays

  • To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
  • Subject: [mg102643] Re: [mg102590] Functions of Arrays
  • From: Patrick Scheibe <pscheibe at trm.uni-leipzig.de>
  • Date: Mon, 17 Aug 2009 04:07:04 -0400 (EDT)
  • References: <200908161039.GAA01145@smc.vnet.net>

Hi,

I'm not exactly sure whether I understood you right but say you want a
function which calculates

f[x1,x2,...] -> x1^2+x2^2+...

and you don't know how many xs you will put into the function, then you
could (beside many other *easier* possibilities) do something like

f[xs__] := Module[{x}, Sum[x^2, {x, {xs}}]];
f[x1, x2]
f[x[1], x[2], x[3]]
f[a, b, c, d]

with the BlankSequence (__) you collect all given parameters into a
sequence of values.

But why don't you give the list as a parameter? Then you would have just
one parameter and you can handle lists of any length. 

g1[l_List] := Sum[v^2, {v, l}]

or shorter

g2[l_List] := l.l

and call it with

g1[{a, b, c, d}]
g2[{a, b, c, d}]

Cheers
Patrick

On Sun, 2009-08-16 at 06:39 -0400, zak wrote:
> Functions can be defined via
> 
> f[x1_, x2_] := x1^2 + x2^2
> 
> in Mathematica.
> 
> 
> But how can I manage it to define a function depending on an array?
> I would like to do something like
> 
> Array[x,2]
> f[x[1]_,x[2]_]:=x[1]^2+x[2]^2
> 
> because the length of the array varies in my application.
> 



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