Using hetrogenous cells for code generation

Hi,

I am trying to convert some code to C using matlab coder. I've hit a problem with cell arrays which I can't quite see how to solve.

It's easiest to explain the problem with a 'toy' example. If a make a small test function something like this...

function out = cellExample(nParams)

myCell = cell(nParams,4);

for i = 1:nParams
    myCell{i,1} = 'test1';
    myCell{i,2} = 'test2';
    myCell{i,3} = 3;
    myCell{i,4} = 4;
end

out = 'ok';

end

..when I run this from matlab, it makes an array that looks like this..

K>> myCell

myCell =

    3×4 cell array

      'test1'    'test2'    [3]    [4]
      'test1'    'test2'    [3]    [4]
      'test1'    'test2'    [3]    [4]

But, when I try to convert this using coder, it falls over with the following error....

"This assignment writes a 'double' value into a 'char' type. Code generation does not support changing types through assignment. Check preceding assignments or input type specifications for type mismatches."

However, I want this to be a hetrogenous cell array, with doubles in some elements, and 'char' in others. How can I do this in coder?

Cheers, Arwel

Answer 1

[Ryan Livingston]

You can do this assuming that nParams is a compile-time constant. For example:

codegen cellExample -args coder.Constant(4) -config:lib -report

works just fine for me. If you are calling cellExample from another function inside of your MATLAB code, then the input must be constant. You can use the following:

function out = cellExample(nParams)
coder.const(nParams); % Give an explicit error if nParams is not constant
myCell = cell(nParams,4);
...
end

to force nParams to be constant and error out if it is not.

The documentation:

https://www.mathworks.com/help/coder/ug/cell-array-restrictions-for-code-generation.html#buy7cvv_1

talks about other requirements for using heterogeneous cell arrays. Mentally I think of them like structs with convenient indexing. This means that the number of elements and the indexing (like field access) must be constant. Homogeneous cell arrays are more analogous to primitive numeric arrays in that they can be variable size and support non-constant indexing.