Flexible property class validation; allow property to be one of several classes (or be a gpuArray)?

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Hello all, this is an example of what I am trying to do:
classdef myClass
properties
val (:,1) single = 0; % Some column vector of single precision data
end
methods
function obj = myClass(val)
if nargin >= 1
obj.val = val;
end
end
end
end
Now, I always want the data in myClass.val to be at single precision, but I may want to load it onto the GPU temporarily for computations. If I do this outside of my object, I can use:
a = rand(10,1);
a = single(a);
a = gpuArray(a)
class(a)
The latter two commands return:
a =
10×1 single gpuArray column vector
0.9340
0.6787
0.7577
0.7431
0.3922
0.6555
0.1712
0.7060
0.0318
0.2769
and
ans =
'gpuArray'
respectively. Now, Matlab clearly knows that a is a single gpuArray, but I don't know how to return that precision as part of the class short of something like c = class(gather(a(1))), which is just silly.
The bigger problem is that if I do:
mc = myClass(a)
Error using myClass (line 8)
Error setting property 'val' of class 'myClass':
Invalid data type. Value must be single or be convertible to single.
Since the gpuArray class fails the validation step. I want write this in such a way that the data is of single precision, but can be on or off of the GPU. Something like:
classdef myClass
properties
val (:,1) {single,gpuSingle} = 0; % Some column vector of single precision data
end
end
which runs into two issues: I cannot define multple types in validation, and I do not know what the actual correct class name is for a single precision GPU array (since class(a) returns 'gpuArray' regardless of the precision of a.
Would it be better to shift the burden out of the property block, and into a set method? E.g.
methods
function obj = set.val(obj,val)
obj.val = single(val);
end
end
which in at least this case is fine, since 'single' is also a method of gpuArray. However, I may also want something more like
properties
val (:,1) {single,cell} = 0; % Some column vector of single precision data
end
where I change behavior of methods based on whether obj.val is a numerical array or a cell array. A pair of basic methods for motivation:
function obj = doThing(obj)
obj.val = arrayfun(@(x) myFun(obj,x),1:10,'UniformOutput',false);
end
function out = view(obj)
if iscell(obj.val)
out = cat(2,obj.val{:})
else
out = obj.val;
end
imagesc(out)
end
TLDR - Is there any way of using property class validation that enforces precision, but allows for gpuArrays, or to allow for the property's class to be a member of a set of classes?
How do I get the precision of a gpuArray?
Any other suggestions?
Cheers,
-DP

Answers (0)

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