Iterating two arrays, without nditer, in numpy?

Question

Consider a specification of numpy arrays, typical for specifying matplotlib plotting data:

t = np.arange(0.0,1.5,0.25)
s = np.sin(2*np.pi*t) 

Basically, this stores the x coordinates of our (x,y) data points in the array t; and the resulting y coordinates (result of y=f(x), in this case sin(x)) in the array s. Then, it is very convenient to use the numpy.nditer function to obtain consecutive pairs of entries in t and s, representing the (x,y) coordinate of a data point, as in:

for x, y in np.nditer([t,s]):
  print("xy: %f:%f" % (x,y))

So, I'm trying the following snippet as test.py:

import numpy as np
print("numpy version {0}".format(np.__version__))
t = np.arange(0.0,1.5,0.25)   ; print("t", ["%+.2e"%i for i in t])
s = np.sin(2*np.pi*t)         ; print("s", ["%+.2e"%i for i in s])
print("i", ["% 9d"%i for i in range(0, len(t))])
for x, y in np.nditer([t,s]):
  print("xy: %f:%f" % (x,y))

... and the results are:

$ python3.2 test.py 
numpy version 1.7.0
t ['+0.00e+00', '+2.50e-01', '+5.00e-01', '+7.50e-01', '+1.00e+00', '+1.25e+00']
s ['+0.00e+00', '+1.00e+00', '+1.22e-16', '-1.00e+00', '-2.45e-16', '+1.00e+00']
i ['        0', '        1', '        2', '        3', '        4', '        5']
xy: 0.000000:0.000000
xy: 0.250000:1.000000
xy: 0.500000:0.000000
xy: 0.750000:-1.000000
xy: 1.000000:-0.000000
xy: 1.250000:1.000000

$ python2.7 test.py 
numpy version 1.5.1
('t', ['+0.00e+00', '+2.50e-01', '+5.00e-01', '+7.50e-01', '+1.00e+00', '+1.25e+00'])
('s', ['+0.00e+00', '+1.00e+00', '+1.22e-16', '-1.00e+00', '-2.45e-16', '+1.00e+00'])
('i', ['        0', '        1', '        2', '        3', '        4', '        5'])
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "test.py", line 10, in <module>
    for x, y in np.nditer([t,s]):
AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'nditer'

Ah - it turns out, that the iterator object nditer, introduced in NumPy 1.6, is not available in the numpy version of my Python 2.7 installation.

So, as I'd like to support that particular version too, I'd need to find a way working for older numpy - but I'd still like the convenience of just specifying for x,y in somearray, and getting the coordinates directly in the loop.

After some messing about with numpy documentation, I came up with this getXyIter function:

import numpy as np
print("numpy version {0}".format(np.__version__))
t = np.arange(0.0,1.5,0.25)   ; print("t", ["%+.2e"%i for i in t])
s = np.sin(2*np.pi*t)         ; print("s", ["%+.2e"%i for i in s])
print("i", ["% 9d"%i for i in range(0, len(t))])

def getXyIter(inarr):
  if np.__version__ >= "1.6.0":
    return np.nditer(inarr.tolist())
  else:
    dimensions = inarr.shape
    xlen = dimensions[1]
    xinds = np.arange(0, xlen, 1)
    return np.transpose(np.take(inarr, xinds, axis=1))

for x, y in getXyIter(np.array([t,s])):
  print("xyIt: %f:%f" % (x,y))

for x, y in np.nditer([t,s]):
  print("xynd: %f:%f" % (x,y))

... which seems to work fine

$ python2.7 test.py 
numpy version 1.5.1
('t', ['+0.00e+00', '+2.50e-01', '+5.00e-01', '+7.50e-01', '+1.00e+00', '+1.25e+00'])
('s', ['+0.00e+00', '+1.00e+00', '+1.22e-16', '-1.00e+00', '-2.45e-16', '+1.00e+00'])
('i', ['        0', '        1', '        2', '        3', '        4', '        5'])
xyIt: 0.000000:0.000000
xyIt: 0.250000:1.000000
xyIt: 0.500000:0.000000
xyIt: 0.750000:-1.000000
xyIt: 1.000000:-0.000000
xyIt: 1.250000:1.000000
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "test.py", line 23, in <module>
    for x, y in np.nditer([t,s]):
AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'nditer'
$ python3.2 test.py 
numpy version 1.7.0
t ['+0.00e+00', '+2.50e-01', '+5.00e-01', '+7.50e-01', '+1.00e+00', '+1.25e+00']
s ['+0.00e+00', '+1.00e+00', '+1.22e-16', '-1.00e+00', '-2.45e-16', '+1.00e+00']
i ['        0', '        1', '        2', '        3', '        4', '        5']
xyIt: 0.000000:0.000000
xyIt: 0.250000:1.000000
xyIt: 0.500000:0.000000
xyIt: 0.750000:-1.000000
xyIt: 1.000000:-0.000000
xyIt: 1.250000:1.000000
xynd: 0.000000:0.000000
xynd: 0.250000:1.000000
xynd: 0.500000:0.000000
xynd: 0.750000:-1.000000
xynd: 1.000000:-0.000000
xynd: 1.250000:1.000000

My question is - is this the way, this kind of iteration is supposed to be done, in versions of numpy < 1.6.0?

Answer 1

How about concatenating the two vectors into an array:

for x,y in np.c_[t,s]:
    print("xy: %f:%f" % (x,y))

This gives

xy: 0.000000:0.000000
xy: 0.250000:1.000000
xy: 0.500000:0.000000
xy: 0.750000:-1.000000
xy: 1.000000:-0.000000
xy: 1.250000:1.000000

If you want to iterate so you can save memory, you can use the itertools.izip function:

for x,y in itertools.izip(t,s):
    print("xy: %f:%f" % (x,y))