string input support?

[sou1x0]

similar to : https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/issues/21213

and how tflite does: tensorflow/tensorflow#21213

could executorch do better on string inputs?

[guangy10]

To make it supported in ExecuTorch I think it needs to be supported in the upstream PyTorch first. I'm not sure if we have a plan to support this feature request. @iseeyuan may know.

[cbilgin]

@dbort since Martin is out, any ideas on this one?

[dbort]

Asking about this internally. Like Martin said, EValue doesn't support String, so I don't expect we'd have first-class support.

The alternative is to provide some kind of wrapper to turn the string into a Tensor, but that will result in either a fully-dynamic-shaped input or an upper-bounded and padded input.

[dbort]

@soulx0 do you have a specific use case for this? There are a bunch of trade-offs, so it would help us understand the possible solutions.

[JacobSzwejbka]

String processing is not supported by export nor do I think its planned cc @angelayi

[dbort]

Closing because we have no plans do to this in the near future. The first step would probably require changes on the pytorch/pytorch export side.