I was trying to Evaluate a Rcpp::Function
with argument arma::vec
, it seems that it takes the argument in four forms without compilation errors. That is, if f
is a Rcpp::Function
and a
is a arma::vec
, then
f(a)
f(wrap(a))
f(as<NumericVector>(wrap(a)))
f(NumericVector(a.begin(),a.end()))
produce no compilation and runtime errors, at least apparently.
For this reason, I have conducted a little test for the four versions of arguments. Since I suspect that somethings will go wrong in garbage collection, I test them again gctorture
.
gctorture(on=FALSE)
Rcpp::sourceCpp(code = '
#include <RcppArmadillo.h>
// [[Rcpp::depends(RcppArmadillo)]]
using namespace Rcpp;
// [[Rcpp::export]]
double foo1(arma::vec a, arma::vec b, Function f){
double sum = 0.0;
for(int i=0;i<100;i++){
sum += as<double>(f(a, b));
}
return sum;
}
// [[Rcpp::export]]
double foo2(arma::vec a, arma::vec b, Function f){
double sum = 0.0;
for(int i=0;i<100;i++){
sum += as<double>(f(wrap(a),wrap(b)));
}
return sum;
}
// [[Rcpp::export]]
double foo3(arma::vec a, arma::vec b, Function f){
double sum = 0.0;
for(int i=0;i<100;i++){
sum += as<double>(f(as<NumericVector>(wrap(a)),as<NumericVector>(wrap(b))));
}
return sum;
}
// [[Rcpp::export]]
double foo4(arma::vec a, arma::vec b, Function f){
double sum = 0.0;
for(int i=0;i<100;i++){
sum += as<double>(f(NumericVector(a.begin(),a.end()),NumericVector(b.begin(),b.end())));
}
return sum;
}
')
# note that when gctorture is on, the program will be very slow as it
# tries to perfrom GC for every allocation.
# gctorture(on=TRUE)
f = function(x,y) {
mean(x) + mean(y)
}
# all three functions should return 700
foo1(c(1,2,3), c(4,5,6), f) # error
foo2(c(1,2,3), c(4,5,6), f) # wrong answer (occasionally)!
foo3(c(1,2,3), c(4,5,6), f) # correct answer
foo4(c(1,2,3), c(4,5,6), f) # correct answer
As a result, the first method produces an error, the second method produces a wrong answer and only the third and the fourth method return the correct answer.
> # they should return 700
> foo1(c(1,2,3), c(4,5,6), f) # error
Error: invalid multibyte string at '<80><a1><e2>'
> foo2(c(1,2,3), c(4,5,6), f) # wrong answer (occasionally)!
[1] 712
> foo3(c(1,2,3), c(4,5,6), f) # correct answer
[1] 700
> foo4(c(1,2,3), c(4,5,6), f) # correct answer
[1] 700
Note that, if gctorture
is set FALSE
, then all functions will return a correct result.
> foo1(c(1,2,3), c(4,5,6), f) # error
[1] 700
> foo2(c(1,2,3), c(4,5,6), f) # wrong answer (occasionally)!
[1] 700
> foo3(c(1,2,3), c(4,5,6), f) # correct answer
[1] 700
> foo4(c(1,2,3), c(4,5,6), f) # correct answer
[1] 700
It means that method 1 and method 2 are subjected to break when garbage is collected during runtime and we don't know when it happens. Thus, it is dangerous to not wrap the parameter properly.
Edit: as of 2017-12-05, all four conversions produce the correct result.
f(a)
f(wrap(a))
f(as<NumericVector>(wrap(a)))
f(NumericVector(a.begin(),a.end()))
and this is the benchmark
> microbenchmark(foo1(c(1,2,3), c(4,5,6), f), foo2(c(1,2,3), c(4,5,6), f), foo
3(c(1,2,3), c(4,5,6), f), foo4(c(1,2,3), c(4,5,6), f))
Unit: milliseconds
expr min lq mean median uq
foo1(c(1, 2, 3), c(4, 5, 6), f) 2.575459 2.694297 2.905398 2.734009 2.921552
foo2(c(1, 2, 3), c(4, 5, 6), f) 2.574565 2.677380 2.880511 2.731615 2.847573
foo3(c(1, 2, 3), c(4, 5, 6), f) 2.582574 2.701779 2.862598 2.753256 2.875745
foo4(c(1, 2, 3), c(4, 5, 6), f) 2.378309 2.469361 2.675188 2.538140 2.695720
max neval
4.186352 100
5.336418 100
4.611379 100
3.734019 100
And f(NumericVector(a.begin(),a.end()))
is marginally faster than other methods.