How do I write a vector with Complex{Float64} type entries into a text file so that I may read it later ? writedlm() does not seem to work :
t = rand(Complex{Float64}, 3);
writedlm("t.txt", t, "");
t2 = readdlm("t.txt")
3×3 Array{Any,2}:
0.431139 "+" "0.6332339101461475im"
0.589629 "+" "0.03915758218748211im"
0.259354 "+" "0.22444070781836611im"
There is no standard for representing complex numbers in delimited files. I would just split them, eg
writedlm("/tmp/t.txt", hcat(real.(t), imag.(t)))
u = readdlm("/tmp/t.txt") |> x -> Complex.(x[:, 1], x[:, 2])
t == u # true
It was useful to learn about this notation, where can I learn more about the use of the | separator in readdlm ? I have found a solution using serialize .
On a separate note, would you consider it worthwhile to enable reading and writing f Complex valued arrays using readdlm ? Serializing makes the file unreadable using text editors.
I think you may misunderstand, the | above is in the |> operator, which just applies that anonymous function.
No, I think that delimited formats should be kept simple. They are not equipped to support any kind of structure.
I would suggest you explore JSON-based solutions: some of them can serialize structures, and they are plain text. Look at the JSON packages in the registry.
It works as long as you tell readdlm that you want to read complex numbers:
julia> t2 = readdlm("t.txt", ',', ComplexF64)
3×1 Array{Complex{Float64},2}:
0.0019004307849912472 + 0.42546410422261594im
0.710874046364316 + 0.12131057843728388im
0.483710505641759 + 0.054679671784845896im
(Julia supports the formats X+Yim, X+Yi, and X+Yj: Julia, Matlab, and Python formats.)