Enormous array of zeros exceeds maximum array size preference.

I would like to create an 99x19x99x19x99x19x99x19 array of zeros. I have tried zeros(99,19,99,19,99,19,99,19), but I got the following error:

"Requested 99x19x99x19x99x19x99x19 (93270.7GB) array exceeds maximum array size preference. Creation of arrays greater than this limit may take a long time and cause MATLAB to become unresponsive."

The reason for trying to create such a large matrix is that I want to construct a Markov transition matrix for a Markov chain with a finite state space of 4-dimensional vectors. This transition matrix will be very sparse (there will be only four or five positive transition probabilities for each "starting point" (x1,x2,x3,x4)). I may use reshape to turn the created 8-dimensional array into a matrix.

Unfortunately, I do not know all the ins and outs of MATLAB. Does someone know some method to get around this memory issue?

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/29832-n-dimensional-sparse-arrays

[Hamid Rhezouani]

Thank you. I will give it a try.