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Glas :Re: [glas] vector space, banach space and hilbert space concepts |
From: Matthias Troyer (troyer_at_[hidden])
Date: 2005-03-25 20:38:00
Hi Karl,
I glanced over a few of the concepts and have some remarks. In my
opinion these concepts are too narrow, i.e. many types which would
model the concept in its mathematical sense are excluded by your
definitions. I give some examples below:
In the Banach space concept you require a member function v.norm().
This is very restrictive since there exist cases where I cannot add a
norm function to a vector type, e.g. if the vector type is provided by
a library not written by me. A free norm(v) function would be greatly
preferred. There are other cases similar cases you also require member
functions, and free functions would be preferred.
Secondly, you require in the vector concepts that a vector "contains n
entries of type value_type, numbered from 0 to n-1", and that there is
a constructor "X(n)". I also find this to be far too restrictive. For
me, a vector is just an element of a vector space. What you describe is
a possible (and common) representation of a vector by its coordinates
in a certain basis set, but again this is too restrictive. For example,
if I were to write a linear solver, I would want to pass a linear
operator A, and a vector b, and get back the solution vector x of the
equation A*x=b. If you were to code such a solver, and require that b
follows your vector concept, you impose far too many constraints. In
some of our applications the vector is, for example, represented by a
3-dimensional array and has no constructor X(n). I would thus prefer to
just define a vector as an element of a vector space, and not confuse
it with a one-dimensional array.
Finally I do not fully understand your comment:
> The Vector concept allows for a scalar multiplication with a scalar of
> a different value_type as the Vector, the Matrix concept does not. An
> important advantage I see is that the Vector allows scalar
> multiplication for something like vector< vector<T > >.
If T here is the scalar type of your vector space, and vector<vector<T>
> the vector type of some vector space, then I do not see any problems
restricting the multiplication. I believe again that there is a
confusion here between the concept "vector" as element of a vector
space and the "vector" class, implementing a one-dimensional array.
Indeed, I suppose that the "value_type" of vector<vector<T> > is
vector<T> and not the scalar type of your vector space, which would be
T. Cleaning up the vector concept, and clearly distinguishing between
the "vector" concept and the "one-dimensional array" as implemented
e.g. by std::vector would solve this issue more elegantly.
Best,
Matthias