Re: [eigen] C++11 Style Initialisation

Hi,

this would be a very welcome addition. It seems to me that bug 954 is exactly about that (though the initial request is slightly different). Regarding c++11, it is sufficient to guard the additional c++11 code with:

#if EIGEN_HAS_CXX11

#endif

or something more specific about initializer_lists and/or variadic templates if needed.

David's addons could be a starting point that should be extended:

- implemented as a ctor

- asserts if the sizes don't match

- support 1D vectors

- support dynamic-size vectors and matrices: sizes must be extracted from the initializer lists.

- make sure broadcasting for fixed size arrays still work: Array4f twos{2.f}; Array44f fours{4.f};

To be implemented we'll have to deal with the tricky ambiguous cases of initialing a runtime vector or matrix with either 1 or 2 elements. (we've already dealt with the compile-time versions)

Ideally, we would like to be able to write:

VectorXd v{1,2,3,4,5,6};

MatrixXd v{1,2,3,4}; // init a 1x4 matrix

but as mentioned by Daniel, we'll get troubles with:

VectorXd{3}; -> non initialized 3x1 or 1x1 [3]?

VectorXd{3,1}; -> non initialized 3x1 or 1x1 [3,1]^T?

MatrixXd{3,2}; -> non initialized 3x2 or 1x2 [3,2]?

Possible solutions:

- enforce the usage of a tagged ctor (as suggested by Daniel)

- use a static member

- enforce usage of double braces:

VectorXd{{3}}; -> [3]

VectorXd{{3,1}}; -> [3,1]^T

MatrixXd{{3,2}}; -> [3,2]

If we go with the always double brace approach, we would enable implicit transposition for column vectors:

VectorXd{{3,1}} <=> VectorXd{{3},{1}};

cheers,

Gaël.

On Tue, Jan 15, 2019 at 1:55 PM Wood, Tobias <tobias.wood@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Hello,

I would very much like to write expressions like:

Eigen::Matrix3f example{1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9};

I have tried searching, but I cannot see a current Bugzilla entry for functionality like this. I found http://eigen.tuxfamily.org/bz/show_bug.cgi?id=954, but that’s slightly different. I can think of several use cases for this, and there are similar StackOverflow questions (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/21280476/uniform-initialization-with-eigen-dynamic-types and https://stackoverflow.com/questions/25159349/is-it-possible-to-initialize-a-const-eigen-matrix)

I know that Eigen is committed to supporting C++03. Is it possible to add support for this in unsupported/cxx11? I would be tempted to try adding this myself, but I would need some pointers on where to start.

Interestingly,

Eigen::Vector3f example2{1, 2, 3};

does work, similarly Vector2f and Vector4f, because they have specific constructors that allow you to write

Eigen::Vector3f example(1, 2, 3);

however, these do not extend to the general case.

Best wishes,

Toby