On 2008-02-07 21:24:35, fabricio.olivetti@gmail.com wrote:

> First, imagine that the dataset is a large matrix of arbitrary values.
> Some datasets hold small integer values on the range of [0; 5] (it's not
> that storing a char is ok, it's just what I need), others may hold
> double values on the range of [-10.0; 10.0]. There is some special
> datasets that is extremely huge, and using double prevents these from
> loading into memory (HUUUUUUUUUUGE). When using "char" I can load those
> datasets, tho.
>
> This data class must be shared among all the algorithms, there's no
> sense in loading the dataset each time I run a different algorithm (they
> all perform the same task, i.e., cluster the data). I must be able to
> compare the performance among them, so it's most likely that I'll run
> two or more algorithms on the same dataset.
>
> The rational on operation is something like this: load data, run each
> algorithm one at a time, compare results.

Without getting into the details, I guess you can store them in your
optimized vectors, but return a union from getData() (or a struct of a type
identifier plus that union, if that's necessary).

Gerhard