Indexing Behavior

Views and slices

ComponentArrays slice, rather than view, when indexing. This catches some people by surprise when they are trying to use indexing on ComponentVectors for dynamic field access. Let's look at an example. We'll make a ComponentVector with a nested structure.

julia> using ComponentArrays

julia> ca = ComponentArray(a=5, b=[4, 1])
ComponentVector{Int64}(a = 5, b = [4, 1])

Using dot notation, we can access and change properties as if ca was a regular struct or NamedTuple.

julia> ca.b[1] = 99;

julia> ca.a = 22;

julia> ca
ComponentVector{Int64}(a = 22, b = [99, 1])

Now let's try with indexing:

julia> ca[:b][1] = 0
0

julia> ca[:a] = 0;

julia> ca
ComponentVector{Int64}(a = 0, b = [99, 1])

We see that the a field changed but the b field didn't. When we did ca[:b], it sliced into ca, thus creating a copy that would not update the original when we went to set the first element to 0. On the other hand, since the update of the a field calls setindex! which updates in-place.

If viewing, rather than slicing, is the desired behavior, use the @view macro or view function:

julia> @view(ca[:b])[1] = 0;

julia> ca
ComponentVector{Int64}(a = 0, b = [0, 1])

Indexing with multiple symbols

It is often useful to create a new ComponentArray with only select fields of an old one. For this reason, ComponentArrays can be indexed with multiple symbolic names:

julia> ca = ComponentArray(a=5, b=[4, 1], c=(a=2, b=[6, 30.0]))
ComponentVector{Float64}(a = 5.0, b = [4.0, 1.0], c = (a = 2.0, b = [6.0, 30.0]))

julia> ca[(:c, :a)]
ComponentVector{Float64}(c = (a = 2.0, b = [6.0, 30.0]), a = 5.0)

julia> @view ca[(:c, :a)]
ComponentVector{Float64,SubArray...}(c = (a = 2.0, b = [6.0, 30.0]), a = 5.0)

We see here that the new ComponentArray has the order of the a and c fields switched according to the order they were indexed by.

Multi-symbol indexing can be performed by passing either a Tuple or an Array of Symbols.

julia> ca[[:c, :a]] == ca[(:c, :a)]
true

Retaining component labels through index operations

Sometimes you might want to index into a ComponentArray without dropping the component name. Let's look at a new example with a more deeply nested structure:

julia> ca = ComponentArray(a=5, b=[4, 1], c=(a=2, b=[6, 30]))
ComponentVector{Int64}(a = 5, b = [4, 1], c = (a = 2, b = [6, 30]))

If we wanted to get the b component while keeping the name, we can use the KeepIndex wrapper around our index:

julia> ca[KeepIndex(:b)]
ComponentVector{Int64}(b = [4, 1])

Now instead of just returning a plain Vector, this returns a ComponentVector that keeps the b name. Of course, this is still compatible with views, so we could have done @view ca[KeepIndex(:b)] if we wanted to retain the view into the origianl.

Similarly, we can use plain indexes like ranges or integers and they will keep the names of any components they capture:

julia> ca[KeepIndex(1)]
ComponentVector{Int64}(a = 5)

julia> ca[KeepIndex(2:3)]
ComponentVector{Int64}(b = [4, 1])

julia> ca[KeepIndex(1:3)]
ComponentVector{Int64}(a = 5, b = [4, 1])

julia> ca[KeepIndex(2:end)]
ComponentVector{Int64}(b = [4, 1], c = (a = 2, b = [6, 30]))

But what if our range doesn't capture a full component? We can see below that using KeepIndex on the first five elements returns a ComponentVector with those elements but only the a and b names, since the c component wasn't fully captured.

julia> ca[KeepIndex(1:5)]
5-element ComponentVector{Int64} with axis Axis(a = 1, b = 2:3):
 5
 4
 1
 2
 6