Re: Help with [] for defined types

[David Bateman]

Andy,

Ok, I'll answer the questions

Question 1
----------

To get a reasonable speed the concatenation function precalcuates the
size of the return type and then dimensions the return value before
inserting the data into it. As the functions in pt-mat.cc
(tree_matrix::rvalue) and data.cc (do_cat) know nothing of the types
its concatenations (it hands that role off to do_catop), it uses a
resize of the octave_value itself. For this reason you have to define
in make_sparse.h something like

#ifdef HAVE_OCTAVE_CONCAT
octave_value 
octave_sparse::resize (const dim_vector& dv) const
{
  if (dv.length() > 2)
    {
      error ("Can not resize sparse matrix to NDArray");
      return octave_value ();
    }
  SuperMatrix retval (*this);

  // Do the magic needed to change the number of rows and columns while
  // leaving the elements of retval alone //

  return new octave_sparse (retval);
}
#endif

where I haven't defined what magic you use to get Sparse LU to resize
a matrix. You'll also need appropriate definitions in the class header
files I imagine.

You'll also need to register the concat functions. For the galois field type
I used macros, and these modified for your use might look like

#ifdef HAVE_OCTAVE_CONCAT
#define DEFCATOP_SPARSE_FN(name, t1, t2, f) \
  CATOPDECL (name, a1, a2)           \
  { \
    CAST_BINOP_ARGS (const octave_ ## t1&, const octave_ ## t2&); \
    return new octave_sparse (f (v1.t1 ## _value (), v2.t2 ## _value (), 
ra_idx)); \
  }

#define INSTALL_SPARSE_CATOP(t1, t2, f) INSTALL_CATOP(t1, t2, f) 
#else
#define DEFCATOP_SPARSE_FN(name, t1, t2, f) 
#define INSTALL_SPARSE_CATOP(t1, t2, f)
#endif

You should then add

DEFCATOP_SPARSE_FN (sm_sm, sparse, sparse, concat)
DEFCATOP_SPARSE_FN (sm_csm, sparse, complex_sparse, concat)
DEFCATOP_SPARSE_FN (csm_sm, complex_sparse, sparse, concat)
DEFCATOP_SPARSE_FN (csm_csm, complex_sparse, complex_sparse, concat)

and the install functions

INSTALL_SPARSE_CATOP (octave_sparse, octave_sparse, sm_sm);
INSTALL_SPARSE_CATOP (octave_sparse, octave_complex_sparse, sm_csm);
INSTALL_SPARSE_CATOP (octave_complex_sparse, octave_sparse, csm_sm);
INSTALL_SPARSE_CATOP (octave_complex_sparse, octave_complex_sparse, csm_csm);

to sparse_ops.cc. If you want to be able to concatenate with normal
matrices you'll need to register other appropriate functions to do
this. The concat and insert functions you've already committed seem
like they are going in the right direct and are the rest of the
puzzle.

QUESTION 2
----------

No this isn't related to question. I made a comment in the comms toolbox and
fixed point toolox documentation on the issue. The important statement is

<quote>
To reload the variable within
octave, the Galois type must be installed prior to a call to
@dfn{load}. That is

@example
octave:1> dummy = gf(1);
octave:2> load a.mat
@end example
</quote>

The problem is until you call the octave_sparse::register_type() function,
Octave knows nothing about this type, and thus the "unknown type" message.
Make a dummy call to sparse and everything should be fine. 

QUESTION 3
----------

The load_binary and save_binary functions are for the octave binary
format (i.e. save -binary ) and have nothing to do with the
-mat-binary format. We have no control over the Matlab file formats
and so there is no way to extend them and thus splitting their functioning
into the octave_value as was done for the ascii, binary and hdf5 formats
makes less sense. This might be done however, with new save_mat_ascii,
save_mat4_binary and save_mat5_binary methods of the octave_value class.
But my feeling is that is pretty ugly.

So unfortunately as it stands unless sparse actually goes into octave
you'll have difficulties using the -mat-binary or even -mat-ascii
formats.  You should be able to use an HDF5 format to exchange data
with matlab however.

QUESTION 4
----------

Did you run autogen.sh to regenerate configure from configure.base?

Cheers
David

-- 
David Bateman                                address@hidden
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