Feature request: Disable operator * for matrices? about linalg HOT 2 CLOSED

This is probably the single most frequently raised issue among users of this library, and not without good reason. It turns out my own unit tests contained an erroneous usage of operator * when matrix multiplication was intended. Through some quirk of fate, the specific version of doctest I was using wasn't correctly invoking templated test cases, and the broken test slipped through.

I've decided to deprecate operator * between pairs of matrices, and provide an unambiguous cmul(...) function that can be called by users who actually want the component-wise (Hadamard) product between matrices. operator * will remain supported for all other patterns with its original semantics.

It took a little bespoke machinery to do so, but I was able to split the definition of operator * into two overloads, one for matrix * matrix, and one for everything else, and attached a deprecation attribute to the matrix * matrix overload, so it should raise a warning any time it is used.

Furthermore, if you #define LINALG_FORWARD_COMPATIBLE, either before including linalg.h or globally across your project, it will remove the matrix * matrix overload completely, making that construct a hard compiler error.

Take care, and happy coding!

from linalg.

This is excellent! Huge thanks for this, it helps us a lot! 🎉👍

from linalg.