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What is the difference between ndarray and array in NumPy?

What is the difference between ndarray and array in NumPy? Where is their implementation in the NumPy source code?

Solution

  • numpy.array is just a convenience function to create an ndarray; it is not a class itself.

    You can also create an array using numpy.ndarray, but it is not the recommended way. From the docstring of numpy.ndarray:

    Arrays should be constructed using array, zeros or empty ... The parameters given here refer to a low-level method (ndarray(...)) for instantiating an array.

    Most of the meat of the implementation is in C code, here in multiarray, but you can start looking at the ndarray interfaces here:

    https://github.com/numpy/numpy/blob/master/numpy/core/numeric.py