[SYSTEMDS-2077] New eval builtin function

• Type: Sub-task
• Status: Closed
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Fixed
• Fix Version/s: SystemDS 2.0
• Assignee: LI Guobao
• Reporter: Matthias Boehm
• Created: 25/Jan/18 04:00
• Updated: 29/Jun/21 18:34
• Resolved: 29/Jun/21 18:34

Description

This new eval builtin function aims to provide a concise language construct to evaluate dynamic expressions and functions.

Similar to R's eval function (https://stat.ethz.ch/R-manual/R-devel/library/base/html/eval.html), this would allow us to evaluate dynamically constructed expressions. There are two major sub tasks here: the invocation of given function pointers and the evaluation of dynamic expressions given as strings. Initially, we would focus on the former by allowing call such as R = eval(fname, A, B, C). So far SystemML does not provide second-order functions which requires explicit if-else conditions for ensemble learning workloads. With this new eval function we could store a list of function names in a frame F and dynamically call them via R[i, ] = eval(F[i,1], A, B, C).

Issue Links

• is related to: SYSTEMDS-2207 Optional secondorder parameter for external functions