Is it possible for me to implement associative arrays this way?
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg66178] Is it possible for me to implement associative arrays this way?
- From: Don Taylor <dont at agora.rdrop.com>
- Date: Wed, 3 May 2006 02:44:49 -0400 (EDT)
- Reply-to: dont at agora.rdrop.com
- Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com
I've tried searching the net to see if I could find an answer before
I bothered folks with this.
I wrote a little bit of code to help someone out. It would have
been very convenient and clear if I could have used short lists as
subscripts, something similar to AWK's associative arrays, not what
Mathematica usually does with lists as subscripts.
With experimenting I think I see how Mathematica uses
{1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6}[[2]];
{1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6}[[{2,3,4}]];
x={1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6};
x[[2]];
x[[2]]=4;
x[[{2, 3, 4}]] = 5
x[[{2, 3, 4}]] = {5, 4, 3}
and even a bit oddly
x[[{2, 3, 4}]] = {5, 4, 3, 2, 1}
But the the syntax
{1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6}[[{{2,3,4}}]]
is not currently used by Mathematica. In other words when a Part
specification is not an integer or list of integers this isn't used.
So, is there some way I could unprotect some bit of Mathematica,
insert a tiny bit of code such that if a Part specification was a
list of a list that it would create a table to implement the
associative array, and then reprotect Mathematica, for use both on
the left and right side of '='?
This would be really convenient and not seem to subvert the
principles too much that Mathematica tries to use.
Thank you