gnu-octave
Port helpers from list-of-lists to flat+shape
Related to #1236. I don't see a problem with the list-of-lists approach, but there are only 2 routines using it so we can delete some code if we port them to flat + shape.
@alexvong1995 can you port @sym/private/mat_rclist_access.m to _make_2d_sym? And then delete the make_2d_sym function.
In any case, I think we should keep the high-level function so that we use the low-level function only when we have to. I think it's quite common for types / data structures / classes to have multiple constructors. WDYT?
Let's discuss here.
- We could keep both "flat + shape" and "list-of-lists".
- do some polymorphic thing (when
shape=kwarg is passed, we expect a flat array). - keep only flat + shape.
I was working toward 3 but I don't feel that strongly about it. I don't think list-of-lists is possible in general b/c of the reasons outlined elsewhere (and even in the help of SymPy's .tolist() operator).
How about make_2d_sym_list_of_lists flattens and then calls _make_2d_sym? That seems the easiest way to keep both.
However, I think every caller of make_2d_sym_list_of_lists will need to think very carefully if they handle empties correctly: which is why I think it might not be worth keeping.
Merging this for now, above decisions not really resolved but I don't think this hurts