Julia - console behaving differently than include("myfile.jl") - julia

Question

I would like to execute the following code, which works perfectly well when I type every line into my Julia console on Windows 10, but throws an error because of the mismatching type LinearAlgebra.Adjoint{Float64,Array{Float64,2}} (my subsequent code expects Array{Float64,2}).
This is the code:
x = [0.2, 0.1, 0.2]
y = [-0.5 0.0 0.5]
fx = x * y
fy = fx'
return fx::Array{Float64,2}, fy::Array{Float64,2}
There is a TypeError, because fy seems to be of type LinearAlgebra.Adjoint{Float64,Array{Float64,2}} instead of Array{Float64,2}.
How can I do a transpose and get a "normal" Array{Float64,2} object ?
And why does this work when I type every line into my Julia console, but does not when I run the file via include("myfile.jl") ?

Answer 1

Use collect to have a copy of actual data rather than a transformed view of the original (note that this rule applies to many other similar situations):
julia> x = [0.2, 0.1, 0.2];
julia> y = [-0.5 0.0 0.5];
julia> fx = x * y
3×3 Array{Float64,2}:
-0.1 0.0 0.1
-0.05 0.0 0.05
-0.1 0.0 0.1
julia> fy = fx'
3×3 LinearAlgebra.Adjoint{Float64,Array{Float64,2}}:
-0.1 -0.05 -0.1
0.0 0.0 0.0
0.1 0.05 0.1
julia> fy = collect(fx')
3×3 Array{Float64,2}:
-0.1 -0.05 -0.1
0.0 0.0 0.0
0.1 0.05 0.1

Answer 2

To get a normal Matrix{Float64} use:
fy = permutedims(fx)
or
fy = Matrix(fx')
Those two are not 100% equivalent in general as fx' is a recursive adjoint operation (conjugate transpose), while permutedims is a non-recursive transpose, but in your case they will give the same result.
What does recursive adjoint mean exactly?
recursive: the conjugate transpose is applied recursively to all entries of the array (in your case you have array of numbers and transpose of a number is the same number so this does not change anything);
adjoint: if you would have complex numbers then the operation would return their complex conjugates (in your case you have real numbers so this does not change anything);
Here is an example when both things matter:
julia> x = [[im, -im], [1-im 1+im]]
2-element Array{Array{Complex{Int64},N} where N,1}:
[0+1im, 0-1im]
[1-1im 1+1im]
julia> permutedims(x)
1×2 Array{Array{Complex{Int64},N} where N,2}:
[0+1im, 0-1im] [1-1im 1+1im]
julia> Matrix(x')
1×2 Array{AbstractArray{Complex{Int64},N} where N,2}:
[0-1im 0+1im] [1+1im; 1-1im]
However, unless you really need to you do not have to do it if you really need to get a conjugate transpose of your data. It is enough to change type assertion to
return fx::Array{Float64,2}, fy::AbstractArray{Float64,2}
or
return fx::Matrix{Float64}, fy::AbstractMatrix{Float64}
Conjugate transpose was designed to avoid unnecessary allocation of data and most of the time this will be more efficient for you (especially with large matrices).
Finally the line:
return fx::Array{Float64,2}, fy::Array{Float64,2}
throws an error also in the Julia command line (not only when run from a script).