In Fortran and some other languages, you can write exp(x) whether x is a scalar or an array. In Julia, you need to write exp.(x) if x is an array. What is the benefit of requiring the dot?

There are plenty of functions that would be ambiguous, such as multiplication between two matrices of the same shape – do you want that to be matrix multiplication or elementwise? You need both for e.g. convolutional neural networks. Languages like Python with numpy generally make those choices on a…

Why does Julia require a . for broadcasting?

Internals & Design

stevengj Split this topic May 18, 2021, 3:14pm 6

14 posts were split to a new topic: When does exp(A) ≈ exp.(A)?

Topic		Replies	Views
Why are there broadcast versions of functions? Internals & Design question	17	5394	December 31, 2017
Not a great example New to Julia	9	1196	February 10, 2020
@. weird behavior New to Julia	10	636	February 13, 2020
Bad performance in simple array broadcast operations Performance broadcast	5	1077	October 12, 2019
Broadcasting across a nested array General Usage broadcasting	47	4085	March 14, 2019

Why does Julia require a . for broadcasting?

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