Repository navigation
RFC: add scalar support to xp.searchsorted #967
Description
import array_api_strict as xp
a = xp.arange(10, device=xp.Device("device1"))
xp.searchsorted(a, 42)raises:
Traceback (most recent call last):
Cell In[5], line 5
xp.searchsorted(a, 42)
File ~/miniforge3/envs/dev/lib/python3.13/site-packages/array_api_strict/_flags.py:395 in wrapper
return func(*args, **kwargs)
File ~/miniforge3/envs/dev/lib/python3.13/site-packages/array_api_strict/_searching_functions.py:78 in searchsorted
if x1.dtype not in _real_numeric_dtypes or x2.dtype not in _real_numeric_dtypes:
AttributeError: 'int' object has no attribute 'dtype'This is a bit annoying as it requires to instead write: xp.searchsorted(a, xp.asarray(42, device=a.device)) which feels unnecessarily verbose.
Even PyTorch accepts the following without complaining, for instance:
import array_api_compat.torch as xp
a = xp.arange(10, device="mps")
xp.searchsorted(a, 42)However, the SPEC does not mention Python scalar support explicitly, so maybe it would need to be updated first?
Activity
lucascolley commentedon Aug 22, 2025
I guess this is similar to #860
lucascolley commentedon Aug 22, 2025
This was at least a conscious decision originally, #699 (comment)
ogrisel commentedon Aug 25, 2025
Indeed, thanks for looking this up. Still, I think that calling
searchsortedwith a scalar as second argument is quite common, and it's easy to forget about passing the device argument when developing with numpy on a CPU and then get the code crash when running with another on GPUs.I think we could make the spec evolve and handle the discrepancy in scalar support via
array_api_compat.lucascolley commentedon Aug 25, 2025
Yes, I think I am +1 because the usage feels similar to
xp.where.kgryte commentedon Aug 25, 2025
I'll go ahead and add this to the next array API workgroup meeting as a discussion topic.
kgryte commentedon Nov 13, 2025
I've opened #982 for adding scalar support to the second argument in
searchsorted.[-]Make `xp.searchsorted` accept Python scalars for the second argument[/-][+]RFC: add scalar support to `xp.searchsorted`[/+]feat: add scalar argument support to `searchsorted`