Concatenating empty array in Numpy

Question

in Matlab I do this:

>> E = [];
>> A = [1 2 3 4 5; 10 20 30 40 50];
>> E = [E ; A]

E =

     1     2     3     4     5
    10    20    30    4         


        

Answer 1

Something that I've build to deal with this sort of problem. It's also deals with list input instead of np.array:

import numpy as np


def cat(tupleOfArrays, axis=0):
    # deals with problems of concating empty arrays
    # also gives better error massages

    # first check that the input is correct
    assert isinstance(tupleOfArrays, tuple), 'first var should be tuple of arrays'

    firstFlag = True
    res = np.array([])

    # run over each element in tuple
    for i in range(len(tupleOfArrays)):
        x = tupleOfArrays[i]
        if len(x) > 0:  # if an empty array\list - skip
            if isinstance(x, list):  # all should be ndarray
                x = np.array(x)
            if x.ndim == 1:  # easier to concat 2d arrays
                x = x.reshape((1, -1))
            if firstFlag:  # for the first non empty array, just swich the empty res array with it
                res = x
                firstFlag = False
            else:  # actual concatination

                # first check that concat dims are good
                if axis == 0:
                    assert res.shape[1] == x.shape[1], "Error concating vertically element index " + str(i) + \
                                                       " with prior elements: given mat shapes are " + \
                                                       str(res.shape) + " & " + str(x.shape)
                else:  # axis == 1:
                    assert res.shape[0] == x.shape[0], "Error concating horizontally element index " + str(i) + \
                                                       " with prior elements: given mat shapes are " + \
                                                       str(res.shape) + " & " + str(x.shape)

                res = np.concatenate((res, x), axis=axis)
    return res


if __name__ == "__main__":
    print(cat((np.array([]), [])))
    print(cat((np.array([1, 2, 3]), np.array([]), [1, 3, 54+1j]), axis=0))
    print(cat((np.array([[1, 2, 3]]).T, np.array([]), np.array([[1, 3, 54+1j]]).T), axis=1))
    print(cat((np.array([[1, 2, 3]]).T, np.array([]), np.array([[3, 54]]).T), axis=1))  # a bad one