Auto-converting one-dimensional AbstractArray to Matrix breaks type-checking logic in Python library
- Dominant language
- Julia
- Stars
- 282
- Forks
- 59
- PR merge metrics
- No merged PRs in 30d
Description
In https://github.com/JuliaPy/SymPy.jl/blob/master/src/matrix.jl#L37:
```julia
## This allows abstract arrays of Sym Objects to slip through sympy.meth() calls
PyCall.PyObject(A::AbstractArray{Sym,2}) =
PyCall.pycall(sympy.Matrix, PyCall.PyObject, [PyCall.PyObject.(A[i,:]) for i in 1:size(A)[1]])
PyCall.PyObject(V::AbstractArray{Sym,1}) =
PyCall.pycall(sympy.Matrix, PyCall.PyObject,[[PyCall.PyObject(v)] for v in V])
```
This is fine for 2 dimensional AbstractArray and above, but it may break type-checking logic in Python library. And in [GAlgebra](https://github.com/pygae/galgebra/) and its Julia wrapper [GAlgebra.jl](https://github.com/pygae/GAlgebra.jl), this is exactly the case.
The parameter `g` of `galgebra.ga.Ga` expects a metric which can be specified in many ways, as a string, as a Python list, or as a SymPy Matrix. The last two has a subtle difference:
- a Python list is treated as diagonal elements of the metric matrix
- a SymPy Matrix is treated as a complete matrix
For example, in the Python version of `galgebra.ga.Ga`, we can use:
```python
#Define spherical coordinate system in 3-d
coords = (r, th, phi) = symbols('r,theta,phi', real=True)
s3d = Ga('e_r,e_th,e_ph', g=[1, r**2, r**2*sin(th)**2], coords=coords)
(er, eth, ephi) = s3d.mv()
```
Convert these to Julia syntax, it naturally becomes something like:
```julia
import SymPy: sympy
using GAlgebra
Ga = galgebra.ga.Ga
(r, th, phi) = coords = sympy.symbols("r theta phi", real=true)
s3d = Ga("e_r e_theta e_phi", g=[1, r^2, r^2 * sympy.sin(th)^2], coords=coords)
(er, eth, ephi) = s3d.mv()
```
But this won't work because SymPy automatically converted one-dimensional AbstractArray to Matrix, and GAlgebra will require a Matrix to be a complete metric Matrix instead of a list of diagonal elements of the metric matrix.
so I'll have to expand the `Ga()` call to
```julia
s3d = Ga("e_r e_theta e_phi", g=[1 0 0; 0 r^2 0; 0 0 r^2 * sympy.sin(th)^2], coords=coords, norm=true)
```
Of course, I can change GAlgebra to handle this scenario by treating one-dimensional `sympy.Matrix` as a list. But this might not work for other Python wrappers, and **the core of the problem is one now can't pass a list of SymPy.jl objects to Python as a list of SymPy objects.**
So I raised this issue to see if it could also cause problems for others and if it can be handled better.
Contributor guide
No contributing guide indexed for this repository
Assessment
This issue has not been assessed yet.