The IfElse Operator

PaddlePaddle’s IfElse operator differs from TensorFlow’s:

• the TensorFlow version takes a scalar boolean value as the condition so that the whole mini-batch goes to either the true or the false branch, whereas
• the PaddlePaddle version takes a vector of boolean value as the condition, and instances corresponding to true values go to the true branch, those corresponding to false values go to the false branch.

Example

The following PaddlePaddle program shows the usage of the IfElse operator:

import paddle as pd

x = minibatch([10, 20, 30]) # shape=[None, 1]
y = var(1) # shape=[1], value=1
z = minibatch([10, 20, 30]) # shape=[None, 1]
cond = larger_than(x, 15) # [false, true, true]

ie = pd.ifelse()
with ie.true_block():
    d = pd.layer.add(x, y)
    ie.output(d, pd.layer.softmax(d))
with ie.false_block():
    d = pd.layer.fc(z)
    ie.output(d, d+1)
o1, o2 = ie(cond)

A challenge to implement the IfElse operator is to infer those variables to be split, or, say, to identify the variable of the mini-batch or those derived from the mini-batch.

An equivalent C++ program is as follows:

namespace pd = paddle;

int x = 10;
int y = 1;
int z = 10;
bool cond = false;
int o1, o2;
if (cond) {
  int d = x + y;
  o1 = z;
  o2 = pd::layer::softmax(z);
} else {
  int d = pd::layer::fc(z);
  o1 = d;
  o2 = d+1;
}