Updating a list of StaticArrays - julia

Question

Suppose I have this function, implemented without StaticArrays
function example_svector_bad(G)
vector_list = [ randn(G) for q in 1:1000]
for i in size(vector_list)
for g in 1:G
vector_list[i][g] = vector_list[i][g] * g
end
end
return vector_list
end
I'm hoping to implement it using StaticArrays for speed gains. However, I don't know how to do it without losing the flexibility of specifying G. For example, I could do
function example_svector()
vector_list = [#SVector randn(3) for q in 1:1000]
for i in size(vector_list)
vector_list[i] = SVector(vector_list[i][1] * 1, vector_list[i][1] * 2,
vector_list[i][1] * 3)
end
return vector_list
end
if I knew that G = 3 and I had to write out SVector(vector_list[i][1] * 1, vector_list[i][1] * 2, vector_list[i][1] * 3).
Is there a way to implement this for any arbitrary number of G?

Answer 1

The size of a static vector or array must be known at the compile time.
At the compile time only types are known (rather than values).
Hence your function could look like this:
function myRandVec(::Val{G}) where G
SVector{G}(rand(G))
end
Note that G is passed as type rather than as value and hence can be used to create a static vector.
This function could be used as:
julia> myRandVec(Val{2}())
2-element SVector{2, Float64} with indices SOneTo(2):
0.7618992223709563
0.5979657793050613

Answer 2

Firstly, there is a mistake in how you are indexing vector_list, where you do
for i in size(vector_list)
Let's see what that does:
julia> x = 1:10;
julia> size(x)
(10,)
The size of x is its length in each dimension, for a vector that is just (10,) since it has only one dimension. Let's try iterating:
julia> for i in size(x)
println(i)
end
10
It just prints out the number 10.
You probably meant
for i in 1:length(vector_list)
but it's better to write
for i in eachindex(vector_list)
since it is more general and safer.
As for your actual question, you can use StaticArrays.SOneTo which provides a static version of [1,2,3]:
function example_svector()
vector_list = [#SVector randn(3) for q in 1:1000]
N = length(eltype(vector_list))
c = SOneTo(N)
for i in eachindex(vector_list)
vector_list[i] = vector_list[i] .* c
end
return vector_list
end