On Monday, November 23, 2015 at 2:46:12 PM UTC+1, Milan Bouchet-Valat wrote: > > Le lundi 23 novembre 2015 à 05:32 -0800, Maxim Berman a écrit : > > Hello, > > > > In Matlab, people often use structures to pass around arguments > > between functions, for example problem instances. This allows some > > flexibility in the development, since I don't have to think of all > > variables that I need and their types, and new objects can be easily > > added to existing structs > > > > In Julia, I tend to use Dicts to replicate this behavior, to pass > > around options and helper structures to my functions. I don't think > > this is recommended since it doesn't allow functions to specialize on > > the type of objects contained in the Dict. > > > > Should I use custom types instead? If some fields can be of different > > types, should I use an abstract type for my options and then use > > different subtypes ? This seems a bit too complicated... On the other > > hand, writing down all arguments in functions without using Dicts or > > custom types can be tedious when they are a lot of variables... > > > > Thanks for your advice. > I'd say yes, use custom types and parameterize them on the types of the > fields that have no fixed type. > > Also, using abstract types in function signatures cannot hurt, and it's > only a pair of lines to add, so I'm not sure you're referring to that > when you say "complicated". Maybe you could give us a short example? > > By "complicated", I think he referred to constructor functions.
Btw, isn't the keyword argument a good alternative solution? I'm no sure whether Julia multipatches the keyword argument type.
