unique_values

unique_values(x: array, /) → array

Returns the unique elements of an input array x.

Data-dependent output shape

The shapes of two of the output arrays for this function depend on the data values in the input array; hence, array libraries which build computation graphs (e.g., JAX, Dask, etc.) can find this function difficult to implement without knowing array values. Accordingly, such libraries may choose to omit this function. See Data-dependent output shapes section for more details.

Parameters:

x (array) – input array. If x has more than one dimension, the function must flatten x and return the unique elements of the flattened array.

Returns:

out (array) – a one-dimensional array containing the set of unique elements in x. The returned array must have the same data type as x.

Notes

  • The order of unique elements returned by this function is unspecified and thus implementation-defined. As a consequence, element order may vary between implementations.

  • Uniqueness should be determined based on value equality (see equal()). For input arrays having floating-point data types, value-based equality implies the following behavior.

    • As nan values compare as False, nan values should be considered distinct.

    • As complex floating-point values having at least one nan component compare as False, complex floating-point values having nan components should be considered distinct.

    • As -0 and +0 compare as True, signed zeros should not be considered distinct, and the corresponding unique element may be implementation-defined (e.g., an implementation may choose to return -0 if -0 occurs before +0).

Changed in version 2022.12: Added complex data type support.

Changed in version 2023.12: Required that the output array must be one-dimensional.