VecTcl is a package for efficiently doing numerical processing in Tcl using a natural syntax close to that of NumPy and Matlab.
It was presented at EuroTcl in 2014: PDF of presentation slides here
The internal representation of values is syntactically compatible with lists (and nested lists, and …) but is optimised internally for the case where all elements are of the same, numeric type.
In VecTcl, there is no distinction between a Tcl list and a vector or matrix. They are created by setting a variable with a list of doubles:
# create a vector
set x { 1 2 3 }
# create a matrix
set A {{1.0 2.0 3.0} {4.0 5.0 6.0} {7.0 8.0 9.0}}Of course, list commands such as list, lappend, linsert, lrepeat etc. can also be used. To evaluate an expression involving vector operations, pass the expression to vexpr:
vexpr { A*x } ;# compute the matrix-vector product
# 14.0 32.0 50.0In order for this to work, you must first load the package and import the commands:
package require vectcl namespace import vectcl::*
Vectors can contain integers, floating-point values or complex numbers:
set x {1 2 3} ;# an integer vector
set y {2.0 3.0 5.0} ;# a floating-point vector
set z {0+1i 2+3.5i 3.0+0i} ;# a complex vectorVecTcl includes support for linear equation solving
vexpr { x = A\y ;# solve A x = y for x
# in the least squares sense if m>n
}array slicing, shaping and reductions
# define a vector with 3 elements
set x {1 2 3}
# ...and a 3x2 matrix
set A {{2.0 3.0} {5.0 6.0} {7.0 8.0}}
# replace column 1 in A with {9 10 11}
# indices start from 0
vexpr { A[:,1] = {9 10 11} }
# { {2.0 9.0} {5.0 10.0} {7.0 11.0} }
# create a matrix with columns x and x.^2
vexpr { A=hstack(x, x.^2) }
# {1.0 1.0} {2.0 4.0} {3.0 9.0}
vexpr { sum(x.^2)}
# 14.0and elementary transcendental functions
vexpr { sinh(2+3i) } ;# complex hyperbolic sine
# -3.5905645899857794+0.5309210862485197iAny Tcl command can be called as a function
set x {1 2 3}
vexpr { n=llength(x); puts(n) }
# writes 3 to stdout
# Caveat: llength(x) is inefficient, it
# involves a conversion to a list. Use rows(x) instead.Not only short expressions are supported. Looping and branching make it possible to write larger math functions in a single expression
vexpr {
for i=1:5 {
if i!=2 {
puts(i)
}
}
} A second command, vproc defines a procedure fully in terms of a VecTcl expression
vproc rms {x} {
# compute the root mean square
xm=mean(x)
sqrt(mean((x-xm).^2))
} Vector expressions are compiled into Tcl procedures; the curious can peek into the compiler output
vectcl::compile {
x, y = list(y, x) ;# swap x and y
A= -3*x
}
# this outputs:
upvar 1 y y
upvar 1 x x
upvar 1 A A
set __temp1 [list [set y] [set x]]
lassign $__temp1 x y
set A [numarray::neg [numarray::* 3 [set x]]]VecTcl can also work with unknowns. A missing value is represented with the word 'NaN':
set v {1 2 3 4 NaN 6 7 NaN}
vectcl::vexpr {v*2}
# results in "2.0 4.0 6.0 8.0 NaN 12.0 14.0 NaN"
set x {1 NaN 3}
set A {{1.0 2.0 3.0} {4.0 5.0 6.0} {7.0 8.0 9.0}}
vectcl::vexpr "A * x"
# results in "NaN NaN NaN"
set x {1 2 3}
set A {{1.0 2.0 3.0} {4.0 5.0 6.0} {7.0 NaN 9.0}}
vectcl::vexpr "A * x"
# results in "14.0 32.0 NaN"This feature is implicitly documented here: https://auriocus.github.io/VecTcl/design/50.html . A more complex example using NaN is here: https://auriocus.github.io/VecTcl/using_vectcl_for_arrays.html .
So, you can use this in calculations where the NaN does not lead to an overall impossible calculation and still get sensible results. This means, the sum or the mean e.g. cannot be calculated because VecTcl does not know what to do when summing up numbers and NaN:
set v {1 2 3 4 NaN 6 7 NaN}
vectcl::vexpr {sum(v)}
# results in "NaN"
vectcl::vexpr {mean(v)}
# results in "NaN"To make such operations work, you would need to define your own version of 'sum()' and 'mean()', explicitly telling VecTcl what to do when a NaN is encountered. For this, you need to know how to test for a NaN. You cannot just compare each number with the string "NaN" ... In VecTcl, the fact is used that NaN is not the same as any other value, NaN itself included. So you can produce a vector telling you which elements are NaN by comparing the vector with itself and then treat the elements as you wish:
set v {1 2 3 NaN 5 NaN}
vectcl::vexpr {nan_mask = v != v}
# results in nan_mask = 0 0 0 1 0 1
# telling you where the NaNs areWith this, we can make a VecTcl function to calculate the mean from a list also having NaN elements:
vproc mean_with_nan {array} {
#
# a VecTcl procedure to compute the mean of a vector possibly having NaN elements
#
isNumber = array == array
length = shape(isNumber)
j = 0
for i=0:length-1 {
if (isNumber[i] == 1) {j = j + array[i]}
}
if (j == 0) {
j
} else {
j/sum(isNumber)
}
}
# Let us test this:
set v {1 2 3 NaN 5 NaN}
vectcl::vexpr {mean_with_nan(v)}
# results in 2.75