Manipulating array shapes

We have already learned about the reshape() function. Another repeating chore is the flattening of arrays. Flattening in this setting entails transforming a multidimensional array into a one-dimensional array. The code for this example is in the shapemanipulation.py file in this book's code bundle.

import numpy as np

# Demonstrates multi dimensional arrays slicing.
#
# Run from the commandline with
#
#  python shapemanipulation.py
print "In: b = arange(24).reshape(2,3,4)"
b = np.arange(24).reshape(2,3,4)

print "In: b"
print b
#Out: 
#array([[[ 0,  1,  2,  3],
#        [ 4,  5,  6,  7],
#        [ 8,  9, 10, 11]],
#
#       [[12, 13, 14, 15],
#        [16, 17, 18, 19],
#        [20, 21, 22, 23]]])

print "In: b.ravel()"
print b.ravel()
#Out: 
#array([ 0,  1,  2,  3,  4,  5,  6,  7,  8,  9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16,
#       17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23])

print "In: b.flatten()"
print b.flatten()
#Out: 
#array([ 0,  1,  2,  3,  4,  5,  6,  7,  8,  9, 10, 11, 12,...