# Assigning a UnitRange to an array
**URL:** https://discourse.julialang.org/t/assigning-a-unitrange-to-an-array/95115
**Category:** General Usage
**Created:** [February 24, 2023, 5:53am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/assigning-a-unitrange-to-an-array/95115 "2023-02-24T05:53:14Z")
**Posts on this page:** 8
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@sransome](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/sransome)
#### Post date: [February 24, 2023, 5:53am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/assigning-a-unitrange-to-an-array/95115/1 "2023-02-24T05:53:14Z")
Hi,
I have a matrix with elements of type UnitRange
```julia
a = Array{UnitRange}(undef ,2,2)
```
I would like to assign a unit range like (200:375) to a range of elements using broadcast.
```julia
a[1,:] .= (200:375)
```
but I get this error
```julia
ERROR: DimensionMismatch: array could not be broadcast to match destination
```
Clearly Julia wants to interpret the UnitRange rather than just assign the array elements to the UnitRange.
Is there a way to achieve what I need?
Thanks
Steve
---
### Author:  [@uniment](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/uniment)
#### Post date: [February 24, 2023, 5:55am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/assigning-a-unitrange-to-an-array/95115/2 "2023-02-24T05:55:56Z")
Have you tried this?
```julia
a[1,:] .= Ref(200:375)
```
---
### Author:  [@sransome](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/sransome)
#### Post date: [February 24, 2023, 5:56am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/assigning-a-unitrange-to-an-array/95115/3 "2023-02-24T05:56:53Z")
Perfect, thanks.
---
### Author:  [@uniment](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/uniment)
#### Post date: [February 24, 2023, 5:59am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/assigning-a-unitrange-to-an-array/95115/4 "2023-02-24T05:59:21Z")
Also, to maintain type stability, you might consider setting `a`’s element type to a _concrete type_. `UnitRange` is a `UnionAll`, and to specify a concrete type you need to parameterize it with the type of its elements—in this case, `UnitRange{Int}`:
```julia
a = Array{UnitRange{Int}}(undef, 2, 2)
```
---
### Author:  [@torrance](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/torrance)
#### Post date: [February 24, 2023, 6:52am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/assigning-a-unitrange-to-an-array/95115/5 "2023-02-24T06:52:13Z")
> [@sransome](#):
>
> `a = Array{UnitRange}(undef ,2,2)`
The reason it won’t broadcast is because the range has a length and so will try to broadcast over that length. The `Ref` works because this has a length one.
As an alternative to the `Ref` which may in some situations be allocating, you can also wrap it as a 1-tuple or in the StaticArrays `Scalar` made specifically for this reason:
```julia
# Tuple
a[1, :] .= (200:375,)
# Scalar
using StaticArrays
a[1, :] .= Scalar(200:375)
```
I prefer `Scalar` as this is more semantic - the next person looking at your code doesn’t have to work out why you used a Ref or a tuple, the reason is right there in the documentation for Scalar.
---
### Author:  [@uniment](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/uniment)
#### Post date: [February 24, 2023, 7:44am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/assigning-a-unitrange-to-an-array/95115/6 "2023-02-24T07:44:25Z")
Huh, didn’t know about `Scalar`. Definitely feels like something that should be in `Base`; the `Ref` trick to cause scalar broadcasting always felt like an ugly hack, especially since you aren’t using it for its mutability.
---
### Author:  [@nilshg](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/nilshg)
#### Post date: [February 24, 2023, 10:36am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/assigning-a-unitrange-to-an-array/95115/7 "2023-02-24T10:36:22Z")
Just to add maybe part of your confusion stems from the fact that the brackets arround the range don’t do anything here, the key is this difference:
```julia
julia> (200:375)
200:375
julia> (200:375,)
(200:375,)
```
this is a difference between arrays and tuples:
```julia
julia> a[1,:] .= [200:375]
2-element view(::Matrix{UnitRange}, 1, :) with eltype UnitRange:
200:375
200:375
```
for tuples just doing `(x)` isn’t possible because parens are used to group expressions as well, while `[x]` will create a 1-element vector. You normally don’t want to use `[x]` though because that has to allocate, hence why people go for `(x,)`, `Ref`, or `Scalar` as discussed.
---
### Author:  [@sransome](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/sransome)
#### Post date: [February 25, 2023, 3:17am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/assigning-a-unitrange-to-an-array/95115/8 "2023-02-25T03:17:11Z")
Thanks for all the help here. Scalar looks like the best solution for me.