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Bug 699 - Function similar to Matlab's/Octave's colon operator
Summary: Function similar to Matlab's/Octave's colon operator
Status: DECISIONNEEDED
Alias: None
Product: Eigen
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Core - general (show other bugs)
Version: 3.3 (current stable)
Hardware: All All
: Normal Feature Request
Assignee: Nobody
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
Depends on: 329
Blocks: 3.4
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Reported: 2013-11-05 12:26 UTC by Christoph Hertzberg
Modified: 2019-12-04 12:47 UTC (History)
3 users (show)



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Description Christoph Hertzberg 2013-11-05 12:26:36 UTC
Sometimes, instead of using LinSpaced it would be more convenient to have an expression similar to Matlab's colon operator. E.g.
0:5:15 = {0, 5, 10, 15} (instead of LinSpaced(4,0,15))

Suggestion: DenseBase::Range(size, low, stepsize) and for fixed size types: Range(low, stepsize). However, if we default stepsize to 1, there would be an ambiguity between Range(size, low) and Range(low, stepsize).
The return type could actually be shared with the current LinSpaced return type (at least for floating point types (cf. Bug 698).

For dynamic sized ranges, instead of specifying the size an alternative syntax which requires an upper bound might also be possible.
I'm also not sure, if Range is the best name for it.
Comment 1 Gael Guennebaud 2014-10-20 16:24:03 UTC
What about introducing a more general Range object which could be specified in different ways, e.g.:

Range<T,I> sizedRange(I size, T low, T high);
Range<T,ptrdiff_t> steppedRange(T step, T low, T high);

LinSpaced(sizedRange(4,0,15)) == LinSpaced(steppedRange(5,0,15))

This is just a rough description of what could be done, but the general idea here is that we have the same issue with block/segment (start/length, versus start/end, indexing even rows, etc.), and thus it would be nice to address them with the same mechanism. See bug 329.
Comment 2 Christoph Hertzberg 2015-04-29 09:34:27 UTC
I see 3 different use cases:

I size, T low, T high --> this is what LinSpaced does
I size, T low, T step (this is what LinSpaced does internally)
T low, T high, T step: calculate size=1+floor((high-low)/step)

For the first two, size could also be specified at compile-time. And actually, if T is an integer, step may also be fixed at compile-time.

We can't distinguish the above methods by overloading a constructor if we want to make T=I possible (which is required for Bug 329), so we probably need three classes for that (they can inherit from a common base class, of course).

Regarding the first case, Bug 1004 is related.
Comment 3 Nobody 2019-12-04 12:47:09 UTC
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