Best practices - initialize a matrix

New to Julia
1

Hello,

I’m doing my first steps in julia and using the v1.0.1, and I wondered what is the best practice to initialize a large matrix.

I’m just initializing in the following way: b = Array{Float64}(undef,dim). But i know there are anothers ways to do that, such as: b = Array{Union{Nothing, String}}(nothing, dim), or use the function spzeros() that creates a sparse matrix with zeros.

What is the best practice? Most of time i just want to initialize the matrix structure, not all the matrix entries.

Thank you,
Tiago

2

This really depends on what you are going to do with the matrix down the line, so maybe you can mention something about that?

1 Like
3

Yes, you’re right, What I am trying to do is the following:

x = h:h:L-h
F = 2*sin.(X) - sin.(2*X)

B = Array{Float64}(undef,n,n)  
#or B = Array{Union{Nothing, String}}(nothing, n, n) or B = spzeros(n, n) 

B[n, 1:n] = F

I construct a vector f, and I just initialize the last row of B with f. Then I just fill the whole matrix B with a loop.

What is the best way to do such thing? My background it’s Matlab and perhaps I am not thinking in the julia way.

Thank you for the patience,
Tiago

4

It sounds like the goal is to have a matrix of only Float64 that have all entries stored? Then I would definitely not use a sparse matrix, and I would not use Union{Float64, Nothing} either. Your plan with using Matrix{Float64}(undef, n, n) and then setting the elements in a loop sounds perfectly reasonable.

Note that

can be written as

B[end, :] = F
2 Likes
5

Oh yes, thank you. I forgot to use the end command and the colon :.

So, if I want to use the spzeros() function it’s only in the case that you have a lot of zeros in the matrix. Ok!

Appreciate the help, thank you :slight_smile: