Re: [eigen] solve API

[Manoj Rajagopalan <rmanoj@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Monday 28 June 2010 01:56:44 pm Gael Guennebaud wrote:
> thank you for taking part to the discussion :)
>
> >
> >
> > [I] How about free functions: (with appropriate template params)
> >
> >   MatrixBase solve(MatrixBase const& A, MatrixBase const& b); // on-left
> >   MatrixBase solve(MatrixBase const& b, MatrixBase const& A); // on-right
>
> how do you distinguish between both functions, they have the same
> prototype..
>
> >  Usage:
> >
> >    x = solve(A,b); // left
> >    x = solve(b,A); // right
>
> same, when I see:
>
> X = solve(B,A);
>
> do you want X = B^-1 A or X = B A^-1 ??? we cannot know for you. (X
> and B can be matrices, not only vectors).
>


Yeah the prototype confusion should have caught my eye - C++ won't distinguish 
the two. Is there some way to prove that A and b come from different levels 
in the MatrixBase specialization hierarchy? If so, then we can disambiguate. 
For (bad) example, if A must be a container and not an expression then A will 
be of type DenseStorageBase. Then the left vs right could be distinguished. 
Right now I think Eigen wants to be able to allow arbitrary expressions for A 
also. For the dense case, requiring that A be a DenseStorageBase or even 
DenseBase, I think we can overcome the prototype collision.

For other cases like DiagonalBase, TriangularView etc. the disambiguation is 
of course automatic ...

Also, I now understand the issue you were raising. Such free functions can be 
built by the user as a library on top of the Eigen API that is currently 
under discussion.

-- Manoj