05-10-2012 09:46 AM
05-10-2012 05:36 PM - edited 05-10-2012 05:39 PM
In the spirit of taxonomy and making the internet just a little bit smaller, the name applied to arrays that have variable row lengths is "ragged array" or "jagged array". (I understand the two names to be interchangeable and have identical meaning)
On a LabVIEW front panel, it's easy to visualize these names, since "ragged" can loosely be defined as "missing pieces from the whole", and if you connect the dots of the final value in each row, you'll get a "jagged" line.
05-10-2012 07:40 PM
05-14-2012 10:11 AM - edited 05-14-2012 10:15 AM
@JackDunaway wrote:
In the spirit of taxonomy and making the internet just a little bit smaller, the name applied to arrays that have variable row lengths is "ragged array" or "jagged array". (I understand the two names to be interchangeable and have identical meaning)
On a LabVIEW front panel, it's easy to visualize these names, since "ragged" can loosely be defined as "missing pieces from the whole", and if you connect the dots of the final value in each row, you'll get a "jagged" line.
I have heard them called "sparse array" Edit: "Them" being what you get if you try to use a 2D array.
05-14-2012 11:08 AM
I don't think a sparse array (or matrix) is quite the same. In a sparse matrix, the nondefault- (most oftern nonzero-) elements are ofter rare and scattered all over, while in a ragged array, they are left aligned in the rows.
(LabVIEW even has a toolkit for spares matrices)