Skip to main content

Manipulate JSON-like data with NumPy-like idioms.

Project description

PyPI version Conda-Forge Python 3.7‒3.11 BSD-3 Clause License Build Test

Scikit-HEP NSF-1836650 DOI Documentation Gitter

Awkward Array is a library for nested, variable-sized data, including arbitrary-length lists, records, mixed types, and missing data, using NumPy-like idioms.

Arrays are dynamically typed, but operations on them are compiled and fast. Their behavior coincides with NumPy when array dimensions are regular and generalizes when they're not.

Motivating example

Given an array of objects with x, y fields and variable-length nested lists like

array = ak.Array([
    [{"x": 1.1, "y": [1]}, {"x": 2.2, "y": [1, 2]}, {"x": 3.3, "y": [1, 2, 3]}],
    [],
    [{"x": 4.4, "y": [1, 2, 3, 4]}, {"x": 5.5, "y": [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]}]
])

the following slices out the y values, drops the first element from each inner list, and runs NumPy's np.square function on everything that is left:

output = np.square(array["y", ..., 1:])

The result is

[
    [[], [4], [4, 9]],
    [],
    [[4, 9, 16], [4, 9, 16, 25]]
]

The equivalent using only Python is

output = []
for sublist in array:
    tmp1 = []
    for record in sublist:
        tmp2 = []
        for number in record["y"][1:]:
            tmp2.append(np.square(number))
        tmp1.append(tmp2)
    output.append(tmp1)

Not only is the expression using Awkward Arrays more concise, using idioms familiar from NumPy, but it's much faster and uses less memory.

For a similar problem 10 million times larger than the one above (on a single-threaded 2.2 GHz processor),

  • the Awkward Array one-liner takes 4.6 seconds to run and uses 2.1 GB of memory,
  • the equivalent using Python lists and dicts takes 138 seconds to run and uses 22 GB of memory.

Speed and memory factors in the double digits are common because we're replacing Python's dynamically typed, pointer-chasing virtual machine with type-specialized, precompiled routines on contiguous data. (In other words, for the same reasons as NumPy.) Even higher speedups are possible when Awkward Array is paired with Numba.

Our presentation at SciPy 2020 provides a good introduction, showing how to use these arrays in a real analysis.

Installation

Awkward Array can be installed from PyPI using pip:

pip install awkward

This will usually download and install a pure-Python wheel for the core awkward package, and a compiled binary wheel for the awkward-cpp C++ components, depending on your operating system and Python version. If not, pip attempts to compile from source (which requires a C++ compiler).

Awkward Array is also available using conda, which always installs a binary:

conda install -c conda-forge awkward

If you have already added conda-forge as a channel, the -c conda-forge is unnecessary. Adding the channel is recommended because it ensures that all of your packages use compatible versions:

conda config --add channels conda-forge
conda update --all

Getting help

Release history Release notifications | RSS feed

Download files

Download the file for your platform. If you're not sure which to choose, learn more about installing packages.

Source Distribution

awkward-2.0.0rc6.tar.gz (4.9 MB view details)

Uploaded Source

Built Distribution

awkward-2.0.0rc6-py3-none-any.whl (534.0 kB view details)

Uploaded Python 3

File details

Details for the file awkward-2.0.0rc6.tar.gz.

File metadata

  • Download URL: awkward-2.0.0rc6.tar.gz
  • Upload date:
  • Size: 4.9 MB
  • Tags: Source
  • Uploaded using Trusted Publishing? No
  • Uploaded via: twine/4.0.2 CPython/3.9.15

File hashes

Hashes for awkward-2.0.0rc6.tar.gz
Algorithm Hash digest
SHA256 172395f65c047479d2f545eb799ce1b6568d4b79fdbfcb790aecc9c777a91ae7
MD5 4dadc63074acd00b129e4e5c40c2cb6e
BLAKE2b-256 70d64954d4d0b485cdb264c13303771a2dcb8ff0f1c25d5bb8e28e8729b2c4af

See more details on using hashes here.

File details

Details for the file awkward-2.0.0rc6-py3-none-any.whl.

File metadata

  • Download URL: awkward-2.0.0rc6-py3-none-any.whl
  • Upload date:
  • Size: 534.0 kB
  • Tags: Python 3
  • Uploaded using Trusted Publishing? No
  • Uploaded via: twine/4.0.2 CPython/3.9.15

File hashes

Hashes for awkward-2.0.0rc6-py3-none-any.whl
Algorithm Hash digest
SHA256 b7fd0beb649a7cff922f9ccdc9bfd7a3f38488c47e53e669351f00958fa83171
MD5 224cfcf64b21d2d0c0df9840ec0cb71d
BLAKE2b-256 a6dae0c155a5204089ffca5dc534ccb384091d76cd9bd503311ec3c87879c37c

See more details on using hashes here.

Supported by

AWS AWS Cloud computing and Security Sponsor Datadog Datadog Monitoring Fastly Fastly CDN Google Google Download Analytics Microsoft Microsoft PSF Sponsor Pingdom Pingdom Monitoring Sentry Sentry Error logging StatusPage StatusPage Status page