storing value in 2D array in a parfor loop

I have something like following

R = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5];

A1 = sparse(5,5);
A2 = sparse(5,5);

parfor i = 1 : size(A1,1)
    
    A1(i,i) = R(i);
    
    %do a lot of things to get "j"
    
    A2(i,j) = 1;
    
end

This gives notorious "Error: The variable A1 in a parfor cannot be classified.". Even if I comment out first line in parfor loop, I will still get error because of A2.

Also, I can't save data in 3rd dimension i.e.

A1(:,:,i) = R(i);

because my A1 matric is sparse matrix. I need it to be sparse.

Can someone tell me any way around this error?

Answer 1

[Edric Ellis]

As mentioned in the documentation, a sliced variable must have a single subscript being the loop variable (in this case i), and the other subscripts must be constant. In this case, the simplest way to fix things is to assign to a complete row or column, like this:

R = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5];
A1 = sparse(5,5);
A2 = sparse(5,5);

[r,c] = size(A1);
parfor i = 1:r
    % Fix assignment into A1:
    % Build a sparse row with the value in the right place
    a1Row = sparse(1, i, R(i), 1, c);
    % Sliced assignment
    A1(i, :) = a1Row;
    
    % Fix assignment into A2:
    % pick random column 
    j = randi(c);
    % Build a sparse row
    a2Row = sparse(1, j, 1, 1, c);
    % Sliced assignment
    A2(i, :) = a2Row;
end

However, this form of assignment into a sparse matrix is probably not terribly efficient, so you might be better off using parfor to build up the sparse co-ordinates and values, and then performing the assignment afterwards, something like this:

% columns to assign
j = zeros(1,r);
% values to assign
v = zeros(1,r);
% Use parfor to build up j,v
parfor i = 1:r
    j(i) = randi(c);
    v(i) = 1;
end
% Build A2 directly from i,j,v
A2 = sparse(1:r, j, v, r, c);

[Luqman Saleem]

Thank you very much