[Numpy-discussion] numarray incompatibility: searchsorted

[Tim Hochberg]

There are some compatibility and doc issues and perhaps a bug in 
numarray.searchsorted. The compatibility issue is that 
Numeric.searchsorted(a, v) accepts either a sequence or scalar value for 
v. Numarray.searchsorted accepts only sequence values.

Second, the doc issue. The docstring for numarray.searchsorted states::

  searchsorted(bins, values)
    searchsort(bins, values) returns the array of greatest indices 'i'
    such that each values[i] <= bins[i].

I assume that should really read something more like::

  searchsorted(bins, values)
    searchsort(bins, values) returns the array A[j] of greatest indices 'i'
    such that each values[j] <= bins[i].

Third, the possible bug:

# na = numarray, np = NumPy
 >>> na.searchsorted([1,2,3,4], [2.5, 3.5])
array([1, 2])
 >>> np.searchsorted([1,2,3,4], [2.5, 3.5])
array([2, 3])

Hmmm. It appears that numarray result does match the numarray docs, (at 
least as I read them), but I like the Numeric behaviour better.  The 
Numeric behaviour also matches the behaviour of the bisect module, which 
is described as::

    bisect = bisect_right(a, x, lo=0, hi=None)
        Return the index where to insert item x in list a, assuming a is 
sorted.

        The return value i is such that all e in a[:i] have e <= x, and 
all e in
        a[i:] have e > x.  So if x already appears in the list, i points 
just
        beyond the rightmost x already there.

        Optional args lo (default 0) and hi (default len(a)) bound the
        slice of a to be searched.

I'd recomend matching the behaviour of the two existing modules (bisect 
and Numeric).

-tim