Argument for generating lax index in catalog_apply

[mosscoder]

Would it be possible to include an index=TRUE/FALSE logical argument in catalog_apply? Save folks from having to extract lidR:::catalog_laxindex from the documentation?

[Jean-Romain]

Why do you want a index = TRUE in catalog_apply()? I mean, you have an index or you don't have an index. If you have lax files along with your las file this will be leveraged automatically.

I think your problem is the hidden function lidR:::catalog_laxindex() right? If the function is not exported and not documented it is because I think one should better use lasindex from LAStools. catalog_laxindex is just a wrapper around the (open) source code of lasindex but with simplifications so it can only uses the default parameters without any tuning.

[mosscoder]

In some cases the products of catalog_apply are for me intermediate, and I plan to use catalog_apply later in subsequent processes. Applying all of the functions in a single call of catalog_apply is not always as efficient because of differences in memory demands between functions, and catering tile size and number of workers for each function can speed up a pipeline. Having an index output would save having me remember to call laxindex.

[Jean-Romain]

Ok so to simplify you want that e.g. lasfilterdecimate returns a catalog already indexed instead of a regular set of files without index. More generally, you want that, if catalog_apply() writes LAS files, those files should be indexed.

This feature should better belong in writeLAS()

writeLAS(las, path, index = TRUE)

With an access to the option through the drivers

ctg@output_options$drivers$LAS$param$index = TRUE

This way there are much more benefits of such feature. That makes sense and it is easy to implement this way. I'll do that this afternoon.

[Jean-Romain]

Done. I added index = FALSE in writeLAS(). This way everything is controlled by the drivers. With

ctg@output_options$drivers$LAS$param$index = TRUE

It should work everywhere in lidR in theory.

[mosscoder]

Thanks for this!