[Numpy-discussion] slow numpy.clip ?

[David Cournapeau]

Robert Kern wrote:
>
> Looking at the code, it's certainly not surprising that the current
> implementation of clip() is slow. It is a direct numpy C API translation of the
> following (taken from numarray, but it is the same in Numeric):
>
>
> def clip(m, m_min, m_max):
>     """clip()  returns a new array with every entry in m that is less than m_min
>     replaced by m_min, and every entry greater than m_max replaced by m_max.
>     """
>     selector = ufunc.less(m, m_min)+2*ufunc.greater(m, m_max)
>     return choose(selector, (m, m_min, m_max))
>
>
> Creating that integer selector array is probably the most expensive part.
> Copying the array, then using putmask() or similar is certainly a better
> approach, and I can see no drawbacks to it.
>
> If anyone is up to translating their faster clip() into C, I'm more than happy
> to check it in. I might also entertain adding a copy=True keyword argument, but
> I'm not entirely certain we should be expanding the API during the 1.0.x series.
>
I  would be happy to code the function; for new code to be added to 
numpy, is there another branch than the current one ? What is the 
approach for a 1.1.x version of numpy ?

For now, putting the function with a copy (the current behaviour ?) 
would be ok, right ? The copy part is a much smaller problem than the 
rest of the function anyway, at least from my modest benchmarking,

David