---
title: "Indexing tensors"
output: rmarkdown::html_vignette
vignette: >
  %\VignetteIndexEntry{Indexing tensors}
  %\VignetteEngine{knitr::rmarkdown}
  %\VignetteEncoding{UTF-8}
---

```{r, include = FALSE}
knitr::opts_chunk$set(
  collapse = TRUE,
  comment = "#>",
  eval = identical(Sys.getenv("TORCH_TEST", unset = "0"), "1"),
  purl = FALSE
)
```

```{r setup}
library(torch)
```

In this article we describe the indexing operator for
torch tensors and how it compares to the R indexing
operator for arrays.

Torch's indexing semantics are closer to numpy's semantics than R's. You will find a lot of similarities between this article and the `numpy` indexing article available [here](https://docs.scipy.org/doc/numpy-1.10.0/user/basics.indexing.html).

## Single element indexing

Single element indexing for a 1-D tensors works mostly as expected. Like R, it is 1-based. Unlike R though, it accepts negative
indices for indexing from the end of the array. (In R, negative indices are used to remove elements.)

```{r}
x <- torch_tensor(1:10)
x[1]
x[-1]
```
You can also subset matrices and higher dimensions arrays using the same syntax:

```{r}
x <- x$reshape(shape = c(2,5))
x
x[1,3]
x[1,-1]
```

Note that if one indexes a multidimensional tensor with fewer indices than dimensions, torch's behaviour differs from R,
which flattens the array. In torch, the missing indices are considered complete slices `:`.

```{r}
x[1]
```


## Slicing and striding

It is possible to slice and stride arrays to extract sub-arrays of the same number of dimensions, but of different sizes than the original. This is best illustrated by a few examples:

```{r}
x <- torch_tensor(1:10)
x
x[2:5]
x[1:(-7)]
```
You can also use the `1:10:2` syntax which means: In the range from 1 to 10, take every second item. For example:

```{r}
x[1:5:2]
```

Another special syntax is the `N`, meaning the size of the specified dimension.

```{r}
x[5:N]
```

> Note: the slicing behavior relies on [Non Standard Evaluation](https://adv-r.hadley.nz/evaluation.html#evaluation). It requires that the expression is passed to the `[` not exactly the resulting R vector.

To allow dynamic dynamic indices, you can create a new slice using the `slc` function.
For example:

```{r}
x[1:5:2]
```

is equivalent to:

```{r}
x[slc(start = 1, end = 5, step = 2)]
```

## Getting the complete dimension

Like in R, you can take all elements in a dimension by leaving an index empty.

Consider a matrix:

```{r}
x <- torch_randn(2, 3)
x
```

The following syntax will give you the first row:

```{r}
x[1,]
```

And this would give you the first 2 columns:

```{r}
x[,1:2]
```

## Dropping dimensions

By default, when indexing by a single integer, this dimension will be dropped to
avoid the singleton dimension:

```{r}
x <- torch_randn(2, 3)
x[1,]$shape
```
You can optionally use the `drop = FALSE` argument to avoid dropping the dimension.

```{r}
x[1,,drop = FALSE]$shape
```
## Adding a new dimension

It's possible to add a new dimension to a tensor using index-like syntax:

```{r}
x <- torch_tensor(c(10))
x$shape
x[, newaxis]$shape
x[, newaxis, newaxis]$shape
```
You can also use `NULL` instead of `newaxis`:

```{r}
x[,NULL]$shape
```

## Dealing with variable number of indices

Sometimes we don't know how many dimensions a tensor has, but we do know what to do with the last available dimension, or the first one. To subsume all others, we can use `..`:

```{r}
z <- torch_tensor(1:125)$reshape(c(5,5,5))
z[1,..]
z[..,1]
```

## Indexing with vectors

Vector indexing is also supported but care must be taken regarding performance as, in general its much less performant than slice based indexing.

> Note: Starting from version 0.5.0, vector indexing in torch follows R semantics,
prior to that the behavior was similar to [numpy's advanced indexing](https://numpy.org/doc/2.2/user/basics.indexing.html#advanced-indexing).
To use the old behavior, consider using `?torch_index`, `?torch_index_put` or `torch_index_put_`.

```{r}
x <- torch_randn(4,4)
x[c(1,3), c(1,3)]
```

You can also use boolean vectors, for example:

```{r}
x[c(TRUE, FALSE, TRUE, FALSE), c(TRUE, FALSE, TRUE, FALSE)]
```

The above examples also work if the index were long or boolean tensors, instead of R vectors.
It's also possible to index with multi-dimensional boolean tensors:

```{r}
x <- torch_tensor(rbind(
  c(1,2,3),
  c(4,5,6)
))
x[x>3]
```

