# Scatter concatenation?

**URL:** <https://discuss.pytorch.org/t/scatter-concatenation/118338>\
**Category:** Uncategorized\
**Created:** [April 15, 2021, 5:52pm UTC](https://discuss.pytorch.org/t/scatter-concatenation/118338 "2021-04-15T17:52:05Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![XT\_Li](https://discuss.pytorch.org/user_avatar/discuss.pytorch.org/xt_li/32/37167_2.png) [@XT\_Li](https://discuss.pytorch.org/u/XT_Li)\
**Post date:** [April 15, 2021, 5:52pm UTC](https://discuss.pytorch.org/t/scatter-concatenation/118338/1 "2021-04-15T17:52:05Z")

</div>

Updates:

I came with something like this:

```auto
import torch
from torch.nn.utils.rnn import pad_sequence

idx = torch.tensor([[0, 0, 1, 1], [0, 0, 0, 1], [2, 2, 3, 3], [2, 2, 2, 2]])
feat = torch.tensor([[11, 12, 21, 22], [13, 14, 15, 23], [31, 32, 41, 42], [33, 34, 35, 36]])

# turn index into one hot
onehot = torch.zeros(4, 4, 4)
onehot.scatter_(0, idx.view(1, 4, 4), 1)

# extract features for each cluster
onehot = onehot.view(4,-1)
feat = feat.view(1, -1)
sub = torch.masked_select(feat, onehot == 1)

# padding
cluster_size = torch.sum(onehot, dim=1).long().numpy().tolist()
clusters = torch.split(sub, cluster_size)
padded_feat = pad_sequence(clusters, batch_first=True)
print(padded_feat)

```

It seems working, although it’s impossible to be batched.

* * *

Original post:

I don’t know if scatter concatenation is the correct name, but I would like to do the following operation:

Suppose I have an index matrix Idx and a feature matrix F:

```auto
Idx = [[0, 0, 1, 1], [0, 0, 0, 1], [2, 2, 3, 3], [2, 2, 2, 2]]
F = [[a1,a2,b1,b2], [a3,a4,a5,b3], [c1,c2,d1,d2], [c3,c4,c5,c6]]

```

I would like to take the features of each cluster defined in the index and put them in a row with padding wherever necessary, so the result looks like:

```auto
out = [[a1,a2,a3,a4,a5,0], [b1,b2,0,0,0,0], [c1,c2,c3,c4,c5,c6], [d1,d2,0,0,0,0]]

```

It’s like a `scatter` operation, but without the reduction. The order of each row in the output doesn’t matter, i.e. `[a1,a2,a3,a4,a5,0]` or `[a2,a1,a4,a3,a5,0]` are both Okay.

I suppose I can for loop and reconstruct each row in the output:

```auto
out = torch.zeros(4, 6)
for i in range(4):
    data = F[Idx==I]
    out[:, :data.shape[0]] = data

```

but I am wondering if there’s more efficient way to do this. Any suggestion would be appreciated.