Introduction — xtensor-python documentation (original) (raw)

Python bindings for the xtensor C++ multi-dimensional array library.

What are xtensor and xtensor-python?

• xtensor is a C++ library for multi-dimensional arrays enabling numpy-style broadcasting and lazy computing.
• xtensor-python enables inplace use of numpy arrays with all the benefits from xtensor

  • C++ universal functions and broadcasting
  • STL - compliant APIs.

The numpy to xtensor cheat sheet from the xtensor documentation shows how numpy APIs translate to C++ with xtensor.

The Python bindings for xtensor are based on the pybind11 C++ library, which enables seemless interoperability between C++ and Python.

Enabling numpy arrays in your C++ libraries

Instead of exposing new types to python, xtensor-python enables the use of NumPy data structures from C++ using Python’s Buffer Protocol.

In addition to the basic accessors and iterators of xtensor containers, it also enables using numpy arrays with xtensor’s expression system.

Besides xtensor-python provides an API to create Universal functions from simple scalar functions from your C++ code.

Finally, a cookiecutter template project is provided. It takes care of the initial work of generating a project skeleton for a C++ extension based on xtensor-python containing a few examples, unit tests and HTML documentation. Find out more about the xtensor-python-cookiecutter.

xtensor and xtensor-python require a modern C++ compiler supporting C++14. The following C++ compilers are supported:

• On Windows platforms, Visual C++ 2015 Update 2, or more recent
• On Unix platforms, gcc 4.9 or a recent version of Clang

Licensing

We use a shared copyright model that enables all contributors to maintain the copyright on their contributions.

This software is licensed under the BSD-3-Clause license. See the LICENSE file for details.

INSTALLATION

• Installation
  • Using the conda-forge package
  • Using the Debian package
  • From source with cmake

USAGE

• Basic Usage
  • Example 1: Use an algorithm of the C++ library on a numpy array inplace
  • Example 2: Create a numpy-style universal function from a C++ scalar function
• Arrays and tensors
  • pyarray
  • pytensor
• Importing numpy C API
  • Extension module with a single file
  • Extension module with multiple files
  • Using other extension modules
• (CMake) Examples
  • Basic example (from readme)
  • Type restriction with SFINAE
  • Fall-back cast
• Getting started with xtensor-python-cookiecutter
  • Usage

API REFERENCE

• API reference
  • Containers
  • Numpy universal functions

DEVELOPER ZONE

• Build, test and benchmark
• Compiler workarounds
  • GCC and std::allocator
• Releasing xtensor-python
  • Releasing a new version
  • Updating the conda-forge recipe