[Numpy-discussion] strange behavior of variable

[Sudheer Joseph]

Hi,
         I have defined a small function to find the n maximum values of an array as below. With in it I assign the input array to a second array and temporarily make the array location after first iteration as nan. I expected this temporary change to be limited to the second variable. However my initial variable gets modified. Can any one through some light to what is happening here?. In case of matlab this logic works.

######
#FUNCTION maxn
######

import numpy as np
def max_n(a,n):
     b=a
     result=[]
     for i in np.arange(1,n+1):
         mxidx=np.where(b==max(b))
         result.append(mxidx)
         b[mxidx]=np.nan
     result=np.ravel(result)    
     return(result)


### TEST

In [8]: x=np.arange(float(0),10)

In [9]: max
max    max_n  

In [9]: max_n(x,2)
Out[9]: array([9, 8])

In [10]: x
Out[10]: array([  0.,   1.,   2.,   3.,   4.,   5.,   6.,   7.,  nan,  nan])
 
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Sudheer Joseph 
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