[ublas] subrow/subcolumn functions?

Subject: [ublas] subrow/subcolumn functions?
From: Frédéric Devernay (frederic.devernay_at_[hidden])
Date: 2010-05-12 05:34:52

Hello,

I'm trying to use ublas proxies in my ublasJama port, and noticed the following:

I want to do the following:
               // elements k..m-1 of column j of A +=  t*(elements k..m-1 of column k of A)

I first tried:
               subrange(column(A,j),k,m) += t*subrange(column(A,k),k,m); // won't compile

but I get 
ublasJama/SingularValueDecomposition.cpp:88:   instantiated from here
/opt/local/include/boost/numeric/ublas/functional.hpp:199: error: assignment of read-only reference 't1'

And I found out the correct way to do it in ublas from the doc:
               matrix_vector_slice<Matrix> (A, slice(k,1,m-k), slice(j,0,m-k)) += t*subrange(column(A,k),k,m);

However, nobody can understand anymore what the code above does...

Why not add subcolumn() and subrow() functions which return a matrix_vector_slice and will give much better lisibility to the code?

I made macros of these:
#define subcolumn(M,c,start,stop) matrix_vector_slice<Matrix> ((M), slice((start),1,(stop)-(start)), slice((c),0,(stop)-(start)))
#define subrow(M,r,start,stop) matrix_vector_slice<Matrix> ((M), slice((r),0,(stop)-(start)), slice((start),1,(stop)-(start)))

and the code becomes much more readable:
               subcolumn(A,j,k,m) += t*subcolumn(A,k,k,m);

I also don't get the advantage of using matrix_row and matrix_column over matrix_vector_slice. Did I miss something?

Fred