Use a vector to print Pascal's triangle in SAS

Yesterday Rick Wicklin showed a cool SAS/IML function to use a matrix and print a Pascal’s triangle. I come up with an alternative solution by using a vector in SAS/IML.

Method

Two functions are used, including a main function PascalRule and a helper function _PascalRule. The helper function recycles the vector every time and fills the updated values; the main function increases the length of the vector from 1 to n.

Pro

Get the nth row directly, for example, return the 10th row by PascalRule(10); no need to use a matrix or matrix related operators; use less memory to fit a possibly bigger n.

Con

More lines of codes; slowlier to print the triangle, since there is no data structure such as matrix to remember the transient numbers.

proc iml;
    /* The main function */
    start PascalRule(n);
        if n <= 1 then
            return({1});
        answer = {1, 1};
        do i = 1 to n - 2 ;
            answer = _PascalRule(answer);
        end;
        return(answer);
    finish;
    /* The helper function */
    start _PascalRule(vector);
        previous = 1;
        do i = 2 to nrow(vector);
            current = vector[i];
            vector[i] = previous + current;
            previous = current;
        end;
        vector = vector // {1};
        return(vector);
    finish;
    /* Print the pascal's triangle */
    do i = 1 to 10;
        x = PascalRule(i);
        x = x`;
        print x;
    end;
quit;

Theoretically, Rick’s solution has a time complexity of O(N^2) and a space complexity of O(N^2), while my solution has a time complexity of O(N^3) (unfortunately have to use three times of do loop in IML) and a space complexity of O(N). Actually it's a trade-off between speed and memory cost.

​