scipy.sparse.lil_matrix

class scipy.sparse.lil_matrix(arg1, shape=None, dtype=None, copy=False)

Row-based linked list sparse matrix

This is an efficient structure for constructing sparse matrices incrementally.

This can be instantiated in several ways:

lil_matrix(D)

with a dense matrix or rank-2 ndarray D

lil_matrix(S)

with another sparse matrix S (equivalent to S.tocsc())

lil_matrix((M, N), [dtype])

to construct an empty matrix with shape (M, N) dtype is optional, defaulting to dtype=’d’.

Notes

Advantages of the LIL format

• supports flexible slicing
• changes to the matrix sparsity structure are efficient

Disadvantages of the LIL format

• arithmetic operations LIL + LIL are slow (consider CSR or CSC)
• slow column slicing (consider CSC)
• slow matrix vector products (consider CSR or CSC)

Intended Usage

• LIL is a convenient format for constructing sparse matrices
• once a matrix has been constructed, convert to CSR or CSC format for fast arithmetic and matrix vector operations
• consider using the COO format when constructing large matrices

Data Structure

• An array (self.rows) of rows, each of which is a sorted list of column indices of non-zero elements.
• The corresponding nonzero values are stored in similar fashion in self.data.