Adding rows to a matrix dynamically

I am trying to get:= Initialize a matrix of Float64 then adding rows to it dynamically in a loop!

I tried with push! and append! but not able to find the right way to do it. I am currently using a not so efficient method where each column of the matrix is constructed as a vector using push! and then I making matrix out of those vectors using hcat.

You likely want to build up your matrix column by column instead of row by row, since Julia uses column major storage, as opposed to numpy, for example, which uses a row major layout. This will make appending rows to a matrix inefficient, since a lot of entries will have to be moved around, unless you preallocate a larger array and introduce a greater stride along the first axis. Here is one way to append columns to a matrix without allocating temporary matrices:

julia> cat!(a, b) = reshape(append!(vec(a), vec(b)), size(a)[1:end-1]..., :)
cat! (generic function with 1 method)

julia> cat!([1 2; 3 4], [1, 2])
2×3 Array{Int64,2}:
 1  2  1
 3  4  2
3 Likes

Thanks @simeonschaub .
I will try your suggestion!

If the size of the vectors is known in advance and not too large, you can also build your data as a vector of static vectors, and then view it as a matrix:

using StaticArrays
vecs = SVector{3,Int}[]
for i in 1:5
    push!(vecs, SVector(1,2,3))
end
m = reshape(reinterpret(Int,vecs),3,:)
3×5 reshape(reinterpret(Int64, ::Array{SArray{Tuple{3},Int64,1,3},1}), 3, 5) with eltype Int64:
 1  1  1  1  1
 2  2  2  2  2
 3  3  3  3  3
2 Likes

Thanks @yha!

size of the arrays is unknown & it varies from case to case.

I tried with the following code but getting errors

function test(N::Int64)
    oa = Matrix{Float64}(undef, 0, 2)
    for _ = 1:N
        if some_condition == true
            append!(oa, rand(1, 2))
        end
    end
    return oa
end


ERROR: MethodError: no method matching append!(::Array{Float64,2}, ::Array{Float64,2})
Closest candidates are:
  append!(::BitArray{1}, ::Any) at bitarray.jl:771
  append!(::AbstractArray{T,1} where T, ::Any) at array.jl:981
  append!(::DataStructures.MutableLinkedList, ::Any...) at ~/.julia/packages/DataStructures/5hvIb/src/mutable_list.jl:160

Thanks!