[Numpy-discussion] Newbie indexing question and print order

[amcmorl]

Hi all,

I'm having a bit of trouble getting my head around numpy's indexing
capabilities. A quick summary of the problem is that I want to
lookup/index in nD from a second array of rank n+1, such that the last
(or first, I guess) dimension contains the lookup co-ordinates for the
value to extract from the first array. Here's a 2D (3,3) example:

In [12]:print ar
[[ 0.15  0.75  0.2 ]
 [ 0.82  0.5   0.77]
 [ 0.21  0.91  0.59]]

In [24]:print inds
[[[1 1]
  [1 1]
  [2 1]]

 [[2 2]
  [0 0]
  [1 0]]

 [[1 1]
  [0 0]
  [2 1]]]

then somehow return the array (barring me making any row/column errors):
In [26]: c = ar.somefancyindexingroutinehere(inds)

In [26]:print c
[[ 0.5  0.5  0.91]
 [ 0.59 0.15 0.82]
 [ 0.5  0.15 0.91]]

i.e. c[x,y] = a[ inds[x,y,0], inds[x,y,1] ]

Any suggestions? It looks like it should be relatively simple using
'put' or 'take' or 'fetch' or 'sit' or something like that, but I'm not
getting it.

While I'm here, can someone help me understand the rationale behind
'print' printing row, column (i.e. a[0,1] = 0.75 in the above example
rather than x, y (=column, row; in which case 0.75 would be in the first
column and second row), which seems to me to be more intuitive.

I'm really enjoying getting into numpy - I can see it'll be
simpler/faster coding than my previous environments, despite me not
knowing my way at the moment, and that python has better opportunities
for extensibility. So, many thanks for your great work.
-- 
Angus McMorland
email a.mcmorland at auckland.ac.nz
mobile +64-21-155-4906

PhD Student, Neurophysiology / Multiphoton & Confocal Imaging
Physiology, University of Auckland
phone +64-9-3737-599 x89707

Armourer, Auckland University Fencing
Secretary, Fencing North Inc.