Issue
Numpy provides both np.absolute
and the alias np.abs
defined via
from .numeric import absolute as abs
which seems to be in obvious violation of the zen of python:
There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it.
So I'm guessing that there is a good reason for this.
I have personally been using np.abs
in almost all of my code and looking at e.g. the number of search results for np.abs vs np.absolute on Stack Overflow it seems like an overwhelming majority does the same (2130 vs 244 hits).
Is there any reason i should preferentially use np.absolute
over np.abs
in my code, or should I simply go for the more "standard" np.abs
?
Solution
It's likely because there a built-in functions with the same name, abs
. The same is true for np.amax
, np.amin
and np.round_
.
The aliases for the NumPy functions abs
, min
, max
and round
are only defined in the top-level package.
So np.abs
and np.absolute
are completely identical. It doesn't matter which one you use.
There are several advantages to the short names: They are shorter and they are known to Python programmers because the names are identical to the built-in Python functions. So end-users have it easier (less to type, less to remember).
But there are reasons to have different names too: NumPy (or more generally 3rd party packages) sometimes need the Python functions abs
, min
, etc. So inside the package they define functions with a different name so you can still access the Python functions - and just in the top-level of the package you expose the "shortcuts". Note: Different names are not the only available option in that case: One could work around that with the Python module builtins
to access the built-in functions if one shadowed a built-in name.
It might also be the case (but that's pure speculation on my part) that they originally only included the long-named functions absolute
(and so on) and only added the short aliases later. Being a large and well-used library the NumPy developers don't remove or deprecate stuff lightly. So they may just keep the long names around because it could break old code/scripts if they would remove them.
Answered By - MSeifert
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