[Numpy-discussion] Adding an axis argument to numpy.unique

[josef.pktd at gmail.com]

On Tue, Aug 20, 2013 at 5:04 AM, Nathaniel Smith <njs at pobox.com> wrote:
> On 20 Aug 2013 01:39, "Joe Kington" <joferkington at gmail.com> 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

>
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