when should i use hstack/vstack vs append vs concatenate vs column_stack

Question

Simple question: what is the advantage of each of these methods. It seems that given the right parameters (and ndarray shapes) they all work seemingly equivalently. Do some

Answer 1

All the functions are written in Python except np.concatenate. With an IPython shell you just use ??.

If not, here's a summary of their code:

vstack
concatenate([atleast_2d(_m) for _m in tup], 0)
i.e. turn all inputs in to 2d (or more) and concatenate on first

hstack
concatenate([atleast_1d(_m) for _m in tup], axis=<0 or 1>)

colstack
transform arrays with (if needed)
    array(arr, copy=False, subok=True, ndmin=2).T

append
concatenate((asarray(arr), values), axis=axis)

In other words, they all work by tweaking the dimensions of the input arrays, and then concatenating on the right axis. They are just convenience functions.

---

And newer np.stack:

arrays = [asanyarray(arr) for arr in arrays]
shapes = set(arr.shape for arr in arrays)
result_ndim = arrays[0].ndim + 1
axis = normalize_axis_index(axis, result_ndim)
sl = (slice(None),) * axis + (_nx.newaxis,)

expanded_arrays = [arr[sl] for arr in arrays]
concatenate(expanded_arrays, axis=axis, out=out)

That is, it expands the dims of all inputs (a bit like np.expand_dims), and then concatenates. With axis=0, the effect is the same as np.array.

hstack documentation now adds:

The functions concatenate, stack and block provide more general stacking and concatenation operations.

np.block is also new. It, in effect, recursively concatenates along the nested lists.