Julia Language Arrays Arrays of Arrays - Properties and Construction
Example
In Julia, you can have an Array that holds other Array type objects. Consider the following examples of initializing various types of Arrays:
A = Array{Float64}(10,10) # A single Array, dimensions 10 by 10, of Float64 type objects
B = Array{Array}(10,10,10) # A 10 by 10 by 10 Array. Each element is an Array of unspecified type and dimension.
C = Array{Array{Float64}}(10) ## A length 10, one-dimensional Array. Each element is an Array of Float64 type objects but unspecified dimensions
D = Array{Array{Float64, 2}}(10) ## A length 10, one-dimensional Array. Each element of is an 2 dimensional array of Float 64 objects
Consider for instance, the differences between C and D here:
julia> C[1] = rand(3)
3-element Array{Float64,1}:
0.604771
0.985604
0.166444
julia> D[1] = rand(3)
ERROR: MethodError:
rand(3) produces an object of type Array{Float64,1}. Since the only specification for the elements of C are that they be Arrays with elements of type Float64, this fits within the definition of C. But, for D we specified that the elements must be 2 dimensional Arrays. Thus, since rand(3) does not produce a 2 dimensional array, we cannot use it to assign a value to a specific element of D
Specify Specific Dimensions of Arrays within an Array
Although we can specify that an Array will hold elements which are of type Array, and we can specify that, e.g. those elements should be 2-dimensional Arrays, we cannot directly specify the dimenions of those elements. E.g. we can't directly specify that we want an Array holding 10 Arrays, each of which being 5,5. We can see this from the syntax for the Array() function used to construct an Array:
Array{T}(dims)
constructs an uninitialized dense array with element type T. dims may be a tuple or a series of integer arguments. The syntax Array(T, dims) is also available, but deprecated.
The type of an Array in Julia encompasses the number of the dimensions but not the size of those dimensions. Thus, there is no place in this syntax to specify the precise dimensions. Nevertheless, a similar effect could be achieved using an Array comprehension:
E = [Array{Float64}(5,5) for idx in 1:10]
Note: this documentation mirrors the following SO Answer
