If you can afford to symmetrize the matrix just before doing calculations, the following should be reasonably fast:
def symmetrize(a):
"""
Return a symmetrized version of NumPy array a.
Values 0 are replaced by the array value at the symmetric
position (with respect to the diagonal), i.e. if a_ij = 0,
then the returned array a' is such that a'_ij = a_ji.
Diagonal values are left untouched.
a -- square NumPy array, such that a_ij = 0 or a_ji = 0,
for i != j.
"""
return a + a.T - numpy.diag(a.diagonal())
This works under reasonable assumptions (such as not doing both a[0, 1] = 42 and the contradictory a[1, 0] = 123 before running symmetrize).
If you really need a transparent symmetrization, you might consider subclassing numpy.ndarray and simply redefining __setitem__:
class SymNDArray(numpy.ndarray):
"""
NumPy array subclass for symmetric matrices.
A SymNDArray arr is such that doing arr[i,j] = value
automatically does arr[j,i] = value, so that array
updates remain symmetrical.
"""
def __setitem__(self, (i, j), value):
super(SymNDArray, self).__setitem__((i, j), value)
super(SymNDArray, self).__setitem__((j, i), value)
def symarray(input_array):
"""
Return a symmetrized version of the array-like input_array.
The returned array has class SymNDArray. Further assignments to the array
are thus automatically symmetrized.
"""
return symmetrize(numpy.asarray(input_array)).view(SymNDArray)
# Example:
a = symarray(numpy.zeros((3, 3)))
a[0, 1] = 42
print a # a[1, 0] == 42 too!
(or the equivalent with matrices instead of arrays, depending on your needs). This approach even handles more complicated assignments, like a[:, 1] = -1, which correctly sets a[1, :] elements.
Note that Python 3 removed the possibility of writing def …(…, (i, j),…), so the code has to be slightly adapted before running with Python 3: def __setitem__(self, indexes, value): (i, j) = indexes…