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in reply to Re^3: aliasing arrays using typeglob under strict
in thread aliasing arrays using typeglob under strict

BrowserUk operates in an environment in which it is vital to squeeze every last, living computron from any processor, algorithm or function with which he deals, so I am not inclined to dispute his assertion that indirect access is "vastly less efficient".

The "vastly less efficient" was in response *only* to 7stud's suggested: my @ydata = @{shift()};.

Duplicating multiple, multi-dimensional arrays (in the case of mat mult), in order to achieve the same, non-indirected notation as you get with aliasing is "vastly less efficient".

Taking that quote, out of that context, is a strawman.

I would say that the (untested) way I have re-written mmMxM() below is, to my taste, at least as clear as the original.

For this simple example, it's not horribly more complex I grant you. But that is the tip of the iceberg.

Rather than this hard-coded sized, square-matrix multiply, let's take the more general form of MxN MatMult:

sub mmMxN { our( @M, @N ); local( *M, *N ) = @_; die "Incompatible matrix dimensions" unless @M == @{ $N[0] }; my @C = map[ (0) x @M ], 0 .. $#{ $N[ 0 ] }; for my $i ( 0 .. $#M ) { for my $j ( 0 .. $#{ $N[0] } ) { $C[ $i ][ $j ] += $M[ $i ][ $_ ] * $N[ $_ ][ $j] for 0 .. + $#N; } } return \@C; }

Now the indirect notation would take a somewhat higher cost on clarity.

Now consider that this is a method within an OO module, and the matrices in question are named instance variables in the object:

sub mmMxN { my $self = shift; die "Incompatible matrix dimensions" unless @{ $self->{M} } == @{ +$self->{N}->[0] }; $self->{R} = map[ (0) x @{ $self->{M} } ], 0 .. $#{ $self->{N}->[ +0 ] }; for my $i ( 0 .. $#{ $self->{M} } ) { for my $j ( 0 .. $#{ $self->{N}->[0] } ) { $self->{R}->[$i]->[$j] += $self->{M}->[$i]->[$_] * $self-> +{N}->[$_]->[$j] for 0 .. $#{ $self->{N} }; } } return $self->{R}; }

Yes, you can use temporaries for the array refs; and I've also exaggerated the syntax problem for effect, but even without that, this is preferable:

sub mmMxN { our ( @M, @N ); my $self = shift; local( *M, *N ) = @{ $self }{ M, N }; die "Incompatible matrix dimensions" unless @{ $M } == @{ $N[0] }; my @R = map[ (0) x @M ], 0 .. $#N[ 0 ]; for my $i ( 0 .. $#M ) { for my $j ( 0 .. $#{ $N[0] } ) { $R[$i][$j] += $M[$i][$_] * $N[$_][$j] for 0 .. $#N; } } $self->{R} = \@R; }

(IMO anyway :)

PS. See also The seven good uses for local.


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