What is the difference between Numpy's array() and asarray() functions?

Question

What is the difference between Numpy\'s array() and asarray() functions? When should you use one rather than the other? They seem to generate identical output for all the in

Answer 1

asarray(x) is like array(x, copy=False)

Use asarray(x) when you want to ensure that x will be an array before any other operations are done. If x is already an array then no copy would be done. It would not cause a redundant performance hit.

Here is an example of a function that ensure x is converted into an array first.

def mysum(x):
    return np.asarray(x).sum()