...<snip>

However, my first interpretation of an axis argument in unique would be that it treats each column (or whatever along axis) separately. Analogously to max, argmax and similar.

Good point! That's certainly a potential source of confusion. However, I can't seem to come up with a better name for the kwarg. Matlab's "unique" function has a "rows" option, which is probably a more intuitive name, but doesn't imply the expansion to N-dimensions. "axis" is still fairly idiomatic, despite the confusion over "unique rows/columns/etc" vs "unique items within each row/column/etc". Any thoughts on a better name for the argument?

On second thought: unique with axis working on each column separately wouldn't create a nice return array, because it won't be rectangular (in general)

Josef

Yeah, and "unique items within each row/column/etc" would be best implemented as a one-line list comprehension for that reason, rather than an addition to unique, i.m.o. Thanks for the feedback! -Joe

To me, `unique_rows` sounds perfect. To go along columns: unique_rows(A.T)

Stéfan Personally, I like this idea as well. A separate `unique_rows` function, which potentially takes an `axis` argument. (Alternately, `unique_sequences` wouldn't imply a particular axis.) Of course, the obvious downside to this is namespace pollution. The upside would be discoverability.

On Tue, Aug 20, 2013 at 5:04 AM, Nathaniel Smith wrote:

On 20 Aug 2013 01:39, "Joe Kington" wrote:

...

...<snip>

...

However, my first interpretation of an axis argument in unique would be that it treats each column (or whatever along axis) separately. Analogously to max, argmax and similar.

Good point!

That's certainly a potential source of confusion. However, I can't seem to come up with a better name for the kwarg. Matlab's "unique" function has a "rows" option, which is probably a more intuitive name, but doesn't imply the expansion to N-dimensions.

"axis" is still fairly idiomatic, despite the confusion over "unique rows/columns/etc" vs "unique items within each row/column/etc".

Any thoughts on a better name for the argument?

I also found this pretty confusing when first looking at the PR.

One option might be to invert the sense of the argument to emphasize that it's treating subarrays as units, so instead of specifying the iteration axis you specify the axes of the subarray. compare_axis= or something?

you would need compare_axes (plural for ndim>2) and have to specify all but one axis, AFAICS. Josef

-n

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On Tue, Aug 20, 2013 at 7:34 AM, Nathaniel Smith wrote:

On 20 Aug 2013 12:09, wrote:

...

On Tue, Aug 20, 2013 at 5:04 AM, Nathaniel Smith wrote:

...

On 20 Aug 2013 01:39, "Joe Kington" wrote:

...

...<snip>

...

However, my first interpretation of an axis argument in unique would be that it treats each column (or whatever along axis) separately. Analogously to max, argmax and similar.

Good point!

That's certainly a potential source of confusion. However, I can't seem to come up with a better name for the kwarg. Matlab's "unique" function has a "rows" option, which is probably a more intuitive name, but doesn't imply the expansion to N-dimensions.

"axis" is still fairly idiomatic, despite the confusion over "unique rows/columns/etc" vs "unique items within each row/column/etc".

Any thoughts on a better name for the argument?

I also found this pretty confusing when first looking at the PR.

One option might be to invert the sense of the argument to emphasize that it's treating subarrays as units, so instead of specifying the iteration axis you specify the axes of the subarray. compare_axis= or something?

you would need compare_axes (plural for ndim>2) and have to specify all but one axis, AFAICS.

Well, it makes sense to specify any arbitrary subset of axes, whether or not that's currently implemented.

not AFAICS, if you want to return a rectangular array without nans/missing values. Josef

-n

_______________________________________________ NumPy-Discussion mailing list NumPy-Discussion@scipy.org http://mail.scipy.org/mailman/listinfo/numpy-discussion

On 20 Aug 2013 12:53, wrote:

On Tue, Aug 20, 2013 at 7:47 AM, wrote:

...

On Tue, Aug 20, 2013 at 7:34 AM, Nathaniel Smith wrote:

...

On 20 Aug 2013 12:09, wrote:

...

On Tue, Aug 20, 2013 at 5:04 AM, Nathaniel Smith

wrote:

...

...

...

...

On 20 Aug 2013 01:39, "Joe Kington" wrote:

...

...<snip> > > > However, my first interpretation of an axis argument in unique

would

...

> be that it treats each column (or whatever along axis) separately. > Analogously to max, argmax and similar.

Good point!

That's certainly a potential source of confusion. However, I can't seem to come up with a better name for the kwarg. Matlab's "unique" function has a "rows" option, which is probably a more intuitive name, but doesn't imply the expansion to N-dimensions.

"axis" is still fairly idiomatic, despite the confusion over "unique rows/columns/etc" vs "unique items within each row/column/etc".

Any thoughts on a better name for the argument?

I also found this pretty confusing when first looking at the PR.

One option might be to invert the sense of the argument to emphasize that it's treating subarrays as units, so instead of specifying the iteration axis you specify the axes of the subarray. compare_axis= or something?

you would need compare_axes (plural for ndim>2) and have to specify all but one axis, AFAICS.

Well, it makes sense to specify any arbitrary subset of axes, whether or not that's currently implemented.

not AFAICS, if you want to return a rectangular array without nans/missing values.

and unless you want to ravel() the remaining axis, which is also weird (I think).

The default (and until this patch, only) behaviour is to ravel all axes, so it'd be consistent. -n