Re: [eigen] [Sparse] element acces in a cwise unary op on an Eigen::Sparse

[Gael Guennebaud <gael.guennebaud@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, Nov 25, 2010 at 3:50 PM,  <bernard.hugueney@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> Hi Gael,
> Thanks for your answer.
>
> On Thu, 25 Nov 2010 13:13:59 +0100, Gael Guennebaud
> <gael.guennebaud@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>
>> Random access to a sparse matrix is inherently very inefficient, and
>> so I decided not to support it. Instead use iterators and/or, some
>
> I am fully aware that is dumb to iterate over the whole virtual matrix
> however, the decision was not mine to make.
> Give that I had to enable some operations that result in a dense matrix
> (e.g. "or equal" logical ops between sparse matrices where 0. <= 0.
> so my result is full) because i am reimplementing an already existing API
> knew that the result would have to be large (i.e. dense) and slow to
> compute.

Do you mean that the existing API implies random access to your
(sparse) objects ? and you cannot extend to support iterators ?
Otherwise, if what you want is to be explicitly aware of the zeros,
what about:

for each column or row j do
{
  int prev = 0;
  for(InnerIterator it(mat,j); it; ++it)
  {
     int i = it.index();
     for(int i0=prev;i0<i;++i0)
     {
       // (i0,j) is a zero
     }
     prev = i+1;
     // (i,j) is a non zero
}

but I feel that won't address your issue, right?

Actually, I'm reluctant to add a coeff() method to matrix base because
then it will become too easy to mix dense/sparse objects in a very
very inefficient way... I'm even not sure that was a good idea to add
coeff() method to SparseMatrix and the likes.

On the other hand I also agree that if we support coeff() for sparse
object with storage, it makes sense to do so for unary expressions,
especially for trivial ones like your cast example ! For binary
expressions that's another story because the sparse pattern change.

So maybe here is a compromise:

- remove the coeff() and coeffRef() methods.
- instead add a searchCoeff(i,j) method returning an iterator. It
would evaluate to false if the coefficient does not exist. Otherwise
one could overwrite the value doing it.value() = x;

This solution clearly say that this operation is going to be slow, and
I think this is even more powerful.

> thank for the suggestion, but I' did not have much better luck with
> lastCoeff():

oops, indeed, sorry, it is implemented only for objects with storage.

> Btw, à propos Eigen::Sparse<bool> :
>
> - it would be nice to be able to set the default value to «true».

I see your point. but on the other hand for other scalar types default
value of non zero is zero, so...

Actually I plane to support SparseMatrix<void> where only the pattern
will be stored. This is equivalent to a  "Sparse<bool>" where all non
zeros are true. Maybe this is what you were looking for when declaring
a Eigen::Sparse<bool> ?

gael

> - template<> struct scalar_fuzzy_impl<bool> seemed to be missing an
>  isMuchSmallerThan() for some sparse operation but I fail
> to be able to reproduce the error (I rewrote the code that was triggering it
> :( )



> Thanks
>
> Best Regards,
>
> Bernard
>
>
>