Pre allocation do not work ...

Hi everyone,

I am a bit lost,

I ran a code this morning and the pre allocation do not work, it changes the size of my matrices with any reason,

So I did a small try like this :

n=3

x = zeros(1,n); 

for ii=1:10
    x( ii ) = ( ii );
end
%    

Before I got an error because the size just exceeds... now it works, it changes the size of x, how to avoid that ?

Best regards,

[Adam]

Pre-size it correctly! You pre-size it to 3 then put it in a for loop up to 10 assignging values to it. Where do you expect the next 7 elements to come from? You didn't pre-allocate those so the array grows in the loop.

Answer 1

[Raj]

Question is not clear. What exactly are you trying to do here?The pre allocation works fine. You can check it by putting breakpoints in your code. The loop simply overwrites the pre allocated matrix. If you want to stop the loop when the execution reaches the preallocated matrix size then use something like this:

n=3
x = zeros(1,n); 
temp=length(x);
for ii=1:10
    x( ii ) = ( ii );
    if ii==temp
        break
    end
end
%

[Rik]

You should avoid using length. Consider using size with a second argument, or numel. This will get you more consistent results.

[Raj]

Can you please explain what you meant by "consistent results"? My understanding is that it doesn't really matter which one you use for a 1xN matrix other than maybe speed of execution in case of very large matrix.

[Rik]

For 1xN it doesn't matter, but as soon as your input is not a vector you will get into trouble. As you can see in the 'answer' below, x is actually an array. If you want to do something with all elements, use numel, otherwise you should use size with the second argument. If the user supplies a column vector and your code expects a row vector, the result could be a memory error. How should your user understand that?

bigN=100000;
A=rand(bigN,1);
B1=rand(bigN,1);
B2=B1';%user didn't read the doc and supplies the wrong shape

no_crash=A.*B1;
crash=A.*B2;

[Raj]

Thanks for the explanation!

Answer 2

[Gauthier Briere]

That's my point ! before I got normally an error saying that the indices exceed the size of the matrice.

If I do this example

n=3;
m=9;

x = zeros(n,m);

for ii=1:n
    for jj=1:m
        
        x(ii,jj) = ii;
        
    end
end

and you change by :

n=3;
m=9;

x = zeros(n,m);

for ii=1:n
    for jj=1:240151
        
        x(ii,jj) = ii;
        
    end
end

It will change the size of x which is really weird because before it never changed the size....

[Walter Roberson]

It would give the index error if you tried to read from a location before writing. For example x(ii, jj) = x(ii, jj) + ii;

[Raj]

I still don't get it!! Why are you expecting an error? The preallocation simply helps in speeding up the loop. See this answer for details:

https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/258627-about-preallocating-for-speed

Other than that the for loop will always overwrite the preallocated loop. If you MUST HAVE an error you can insert it manually like this:

n=3
x = zeros(1,n); 
temp=length(x);
for ii=1:10
       if ii>temp
            error('Index exceeds preallocated matrix size')
            break
       end
    x( ii ) = ( ii );

end
%    

[Gauthier Briere]

Ok I think I got it, thanks for your help, I just misunderstood