Find nearest value in numpy array

Question

Is there a numpy-thonic way, e.g. function, to find the nearest value in an array?

Example:

np.find_nearest( array, value )

Answer 1

With slight modification, the answer above works with arrays of arbitrary dimension (1d, 2d, 3d, ...):

def find_nearest(a, a0):
    "Element in nd array `a` closest to the scalar value `a0`"
    idx = np.abs(a - a0).argmin()
    return a.flat[idx]

Or, written as a single line:

a.flat[np.abs(a - a0).argmin()]