Parfor loop and variable length output

4 次查看(过去 30 天)
Hello everyone,
I would like to speed-up a code using a parfor loop but my function is not straightforwardly suitable for it. In particular, the problem is the for loop contains a function whose output has a variable length and I need to store all the variable outputs in a final vector.
I can predict the maximum length of the final result, but most likely I will only use one tenth of this maximum.
result = zeros(1,10000);
N_result = 0;
for i = 1:N
result_i = generate_result(i); % This has a variable number of elements
result(N_result+1:numel(result_i) = result_i;
N_result = N_result+numel(result_i);
end
I would like to use the parfor instead of a for, but I don't know how merge the variable result_i in a single output result. It would be perfect if I could create a variable length vector for each worker, and then merge those vectors.
How can I do this?
Alessandro.

采纳的回答

Edric Ellis
Edric Ellis 2015-2-26
You have several options here. Probably the simplest is to return a cell array and then concatenate the contents. It might not be terribly efficient though if N is large compared to the number of outputs you're returning (this is because cell arrays where each cell contains only a small number of elements have memory and performance overhead compared to a numeric array).
Here's an example. (Note the use of feval to work around a PARFOR restriction on using function handles)
% Here's a simple function that generates a random array of a random size:
generate_result = @(x) x * rand(1, randi([0,10]))
parfor idx = 1:7
output{idx} = feval(generate_result, idx);
end
% Now, concatenate the output elements into a single array
output = [output{:}];
  2 个评论
Alessandro Masullo
Alessandro Masullo 2015-2-27
Thank you for the answer. Just out of curiosity, is this the proper way of doing what I want to do? Does the feval affect the speed?
Thank you.
Edric Ellis
Edric Ellis 2015-3-2
编辑:Edric Ellis 2015-3-2
You don't normally need to use feval - I needed it only because generate_result is a function handle, and there's a limitation with PARFOR which means you must invoke those using feval. In your case, if generate_result is an ordinary function, you shouldn't use feval.

请先登录,再进行评论。

更多回答(0 个)

类别

Help CenterFile Exchange 中查找有关 Loops and Conditional Statements 的更多信息

Community Treasure Hunt

Find the treasures in MATLAB Central and discover how the community can help you!

Start Hunting!

Translated by