Behavior of Base.maximum

New to Julia
1

Hello! The following piece of code (example) prints 10 while I would have expected 5:

for i = 1:1
    it = 1:5
    f(t) = t
    b = maximum(f, it)
    f(t) = 2*t
    display(b)
end

Does someone have an explanation for that behavior? Thanks

2

You may need looking for ‘argmax’, which returns the index of the largest element.

3

Actually, no. Ignore my comments.

4

When you declare functions like f(x) = y this creates a global binding to f in the module as soon as it gets compiled (likewise when you declare functions with function). What you want are “anonymous functions”

f = t -> t
f = t -> 2t

It’s unfortunate that this distinction exists, but my understanding is that it would vastly complicate the compiler to fix it.

4 Likes
5

As @ExpandingMan said, a solution is to use anonymous functions. See here and the linked issue for more details:

1 Like
6

Ok got it. Thanks!