Re: RFC 81 and broadcasting

Christian Soeller wrote:
> Maybe that's already implicit in the broadcasting proposal but it
> wouldn't hurt to spell it out:
>
>   A dimension size of 1 should be broadcasted to match that of the
>   other operand. So, for example, the following shapes (returned by
>   @#array) are compatible:
>
>    @c     =         @a       *       @b
>
>   result shape     shape @a        shape @b
>
>   [4,8,5]           [4,1,5]        [4,8,5]
>   [5,3,2]           [1,3,2]        [5,1,2]
>
Isn't that already spelt out?

<quote>
If the operands are a column vector and a row vector, the elements of each
vector are combined into a two dimensional array:

  my int @vec1 = (2,3);     # 1st dimension
  my int @vec2 = ([2],[3]); # 2nd dimension
  @i = @vec1*@vec2;         # ([2*2,3*2],[2*3,3*3]) == ([4,6],[6,9])

Equivalent combinatorial broadcasting occurs if the operands are
perpendicular planes (creating a cube), and so forth for higher
dimensional arrays.
</quote>

> In that respect it would be nice to have a slicing syntax to introduce
> 'dummy' dimensions of size 1 (e.g. Yorick uses the concept of a
> pseudo-index, [1]; similarly NumPy [2]; PDL has dummy dimensions via '*'
> using C<slice>):
>
>   @a = sin @x; # 1D array
>   @b = cos @x;
>
>   @twod = @a * @b[-;];
>
> which would be the same as
>
>   @twod[|i;|j] = @a[|i] * @b[|j];
>
So is your proposal basically that we need a way to transpose arrays easily?
To be honest, I don't really get the point of stuff like NumPy's "NewAxis",
so I might be misunderstanding your proposal. But at least for your example,
we would just have:

  @a = sin @x; # 1D array
  @b = cos @x;

  @twod = @a * transpose(@b);

or if we don't have a transpose() builtin:

  @twod = @a * part(1, @b);