[Numpy-discussion] .max() and zero length arrays

[David M. Cooke]

On Mon, May 14, 2007 at 12:38:58PM -0500, Nick Fotopoulos wrote:
> Dear all,
> 
> I find myself frequently wanting to take the max of an array that
> might have zero length.  If it is zero length, it throws an exception,
> when I would like to gracefully substitute my own value.  For example,
> one solution with lists is to do max(possibly_empty_list +
> [minimum_value]), but it seems clunky to do a similar trick with
> arrays and concatenate or to use a try: except: block.  What do other
> people do?  If there's no good idiom, would it be possible to add
> kwargs like default_value and/or minimum_value?

What about if maximum returned negative infinity (for floats)
or the minimum int? That would make maximum act like sum and product,
where the identity for those functions is returned:

In [2]: sum([])
Out[2]: 0.0
In [3]: product([])
Out[3]: 1.0

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|David M. Cooke                      http://arbutus.physics.mcmaster.ca/dmc/
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