[SciPy-user] Array functions

[Dan Christensen]

Robert Kern <rkern at ucsd.edu> writes:

> Howey, David A wrote:
>
>> I want to test if any array contains ONLY zeros.
> 
> In [1]: a = array((0,0,0,0,0))
>
> In [2]: alltrue(a == 0)
>
> There's also a sometrue() function, too.

Some curious timing info for v=array([1]+[0]*32+[1]), python 2.4:

                             Numeric 23.8       numarray 1.3.3

innerproduct(v,v)!=0.0       16 usec             5 usec
sometrue(v)                   8 usec            84 usec
alltrue(v==0.0)              21 usec            50 usec

So with both Numeric and numarray, alltrue is not the best option.
But whether innerproduct or sometrue is best depends strongly on
which package you are using.  The 84 usec result for numarray is
a bit shocking, considering that it can compute the innerproduct
in 5 usec.

Similar timing results happen for other arrays;  I believe that
neither alltrue nor sometrue use short-circuit logic, so they
examine all the elements even if the truth value is clear from
an initial subsequence.  I also am in the position that I often
need to know whether an array is completely zero, so I'd find
a version of sometrue which short-circuits quite useful.

Dan