ITensor / ITensor/NamedGraphs.jl

`similar` for generically constructing graphs of the same/similar type without edges

Open
#33 0 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

Dominant language
Julia
Stars
10
Forks
5
Avg merge
6h 43m
Merged PRs (30d)
17

Description

Graphs.jl doesn't seem to provide a generic interface for creating graphs of the same type without any edges, and possibly with new vertices.

The closest concept in Julia seems to be Base.similar, for example for sparse arrays:

julia> using SparseArrays

julia> A = sprandn(4, 4, 0.5)
4×4 SparseMatrixCSC{Float64, Int64} with 7 stored entries:
   ⋅         ⋅     ⋅          ⋅ 
 -0.21712    ⋅   -0.741368   0.199437
   ⋅         ⋅     ⋅         1.78635
  0.486078   ⋅    0.593271  -0.199654

julia> similar(A, 4, 4)
4×4 SparseMatrixCSC{Float64, Int64} with 0 stored entries:
  ⋅    ⋅    ⋅    ⋅ 
  ⋅    ⋅    ⋅    ⋅ 
  ⋅    ⋅    ⋅    ⋅ 
  ⋅    ⋅    ⋅    ⋅ 

though for some reason it doesn't work for types:

julia> similar(typeof(A), 4, 4)
ERROR: MethodError: no method matching SparseMatrixCSC{Float64, Int64}(::UndefInitializer, ::Tuple{Int64, Int64})
Closest candidates are:
  SparseMatrixCSC{Tv, Ti}(::LinearAlgebra.UniformScaling, ::Tuple{Int64, Int64}) where {Tv, Ti} at /Applications/Julia-1.8.5.app/Contents/Resources/julia/share/julia/stdlib/v1.8/SparseArrays/src/sparsematrix.jl:1788
Stacktrace:
 [1] similar(#unused#::Type{SparseMatrixCSC{Float64, Int64}}, dims::Tuple{Int64, Int64})
   @ Base ./abstractarray.jl:841
 [2] similar(::Type{SparseMatrixCSC{Float64, Int64}}, ::Int64, ::Int64)
   @ Base ./abstractarray.jl:839
 [3] top-level scope
   @ REPL[20]:1

We could adopt the interface:

Base.similar(g::AbstractGraph, vertices)
Base.similar(g::AbstractGraph, nvertices::Integer)
Base.similar(G::Type{<:AbstractGraph}, vertices)
Base.similar(G::Type{<:AbstractGraph}, nvertices::Integer)

as a way to generically create a graph of the same type G without any edges with either the specified vertex collection or number of vertices. Additionally this could be used as an interface for creating a similar graph with a new vertex type, and new vertex data and edge data types in the case of data graphs.

Originally posted by @mtfishman in https://github.com/mtfishman/NamedGraphs.jl/pull/32#discussion_r1105037874

Contributor guide

No contributing guide indexed for this repository

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

The issue names no implementation file or test. Start by reviewing the AbstractGraph and Base.similar interfaces in Graphs.jl and NamedGraphs.jl, then determine the supported vertex and data-type forms. Done means an edge-free graph of the requested type can be constructed from either a vertex collection or vertex count, with tests covering the agreed interface.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
julia
Domain
data
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
35/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.