Generating large sparse matrices

[KASR]

When generating large matrices it can happen that the number of elements is larger then the max value that can be stored in "int" format. If this happens I use the workaround below to generate the matrix in multiple steps. However this is not ideal. Can the "int" limitation be changed into "long" or would this result in other problems?

if length(MyRowIdx) > intmax('int32')
    
    Idx = false(length(MyRowIdx),1);
    Idx( 1 : intmax('int32') ) = true;
    H = fsparse(MyRowIdx(Idx), MyColIdx(Idx), Val(Idx), [numElem, numElem]);
    
    MyRowIdx(Idx) = [];
    MyColIdx(Idx) = [];
    Val(Idx) = [];
    
    while any(MyRowIdx)
        
        Idx = false(length(MyRowIdx),1);
        Idx( 1 : min( length(MyRowIdx) , intmax('int32') ) ) = true;
        
        H = H + fsparse(MyRowIdx(Idx), MyColIdx(Idx), Val(Idx), [numElem, numElem]);
        
        MyRowIdx(Idx) = [];
        MyColIdx(Idx) = [];
        Val(Idx) = [];
        
    end
    
else
    % we can generate the matrix in a single fsparse call
    H = fsparse(MyRowIdx, MyColIdx, Val, [numElem, numElem]);
end