How to filter with arrays containing missing values#

import awkward as ak
import numpy as np

Indexing with missing values#

In Building an awkward index, we looked building arrays of integers to perform awkward indexing using ak.argmin() and ak.argmax(). In particular, the keepdims argument of ak.argmin() and ak.argmax() is very useful for creating arrays that can be used to index into the original array. However, reducers such as ak.argmax() behave differently when they are asked to operate upon empty lists.

Let’s first create an array that contains empty sublists:

array = ak.Array(
    [
        [],
        [10, 3, 2, 9],
        [4, 5, 5, 12, 6],
        [],
        [8, 9, -1],
    ]
)
array
[[],
 [10, 3, 2, 9],
 [4, 5, 5, 12, 6],
 [],
 [8, 9, -1]]
---------------------
type: 5 * var * int64

Awkward reducers accept a mask_identity argument, which changes the ak.Array.type and the values of the result:

ak.argmax(array, keepdims=True, axis=-1, mask_identity=False)
[[-1],
 [0],
 [3],
 [-1],
 [1]]
-------------------
type: 5 * 1 * int64
ak.argmax(array, keepdims=True, axis=-1, mask_identity=True)
[[None],
 [0],
 [3],
 [None],
 [1]]
--------------------
type: 5 * 1 * ?int64

Setting mask_identity=True yields the identity value for the reducer instead of None when reducing empty lists. From the above examples of ak.argmax(), we can see that the identity for the ak.argmax() is -1: What happens if we try and use the array produced with mask_identity=False to index into array?

As discussed in Indexing with argmin and argmax, we first need to convert at least one dimension to a ragged dimension

index = ak.from_regular(
    ak.argmax(array, keepdims=True, axis=-1, mask_identity=False)
)

Now, if we try and index into array with index, it will raise an exception

array[index]
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
IndexError                                Traceback (most recent call last)
File ~/micromamba/envs/awkward-docs/lib/python3.10/site-packages/awkward/highlevel.py:994, in Array.__getitem__(self, where)
    992 with ak._errors.SlicingErrorContext(self, where):
    993     return wrap_layout(
--> 994         prepare_layout(self._layout[where]), self._behavior, allow_other=True
    995     )

File ~/micromamba/envs/awkward-docs/lib/python3.10/site-packages/awkward/contents/content.py:519, in Content.__getitem__(self, where)
    518 def __getitem__(self, where):
--> 519     return self._getitem(where)

File ~/micromamba/envs/awkward-docs/lib/python3.10/site-packages/awkward/contents/content.py:572, in Content._getitem(self, where)
    571 elif isinstance(where, ak.highlevel.Array):
--> 572     return self._getitem(where.layout)
    574 # Convert between nplikes of different backends

File ~/micromamba/envs/awkward-docs/lib/python3.10/site-packages/awkward/contents/content.py:647, in Content._getitem(self, where)
    646 elif isinstance(where, Content):
--> 647     return self._getitem((where,))
    649 elif is_sized_iterable(where):
    650     # Do we have an array

File ~/micromamba/envs/awkward-docs/lib/python3.10/site-packages/awkward/contents/content.py:564, in Content._getitem(self, where)
    557 next = ak.contents.RegularArray(
    558     this,
    559     this.length,
    560     1,
    561     parameters=None,
    562 )
--> 564 out = next._getitem_next(nextwhere[0], nextwhere[1:], None)
    566 if out.length is not unknown_length and out.length == 0:

File ~/micromamba/envs/awkward-docs/lib/python3.10/site-packages/awkward/contents/regulararray.py:708, in RegularArray._getitem_next(self, head, tail, advanced)
    693 self._maybe_index_error(
    694     self._backend[
    695         "awkward_RegularArray_getitem_jagged_expand",
   (...)
    706     slicer=head,
    707 )
--> 708 down = self._content._getitem_next_jagged(
    709     multistarts, multistops, head._content, tail
    710 )
    712 return RegularArray(
    713     down, headlength, self._length, parameters=self._parameters
    714 )

File ~/micromamba/envs/awkward-docs/lib/python3.10/site-packages/awkward/contents/listoffsetarray.py:412, in ListOffsetArray._getitem_next_jagged(self, slicestarts, slicestops, slicecontent, tail)
    409 out = ak.contents.ListArray(
    410     self.starts, self.stops, self._content, parameters=self._parameters
    411 )
--> 412 return out._getitem_next_jagged(slicestarts, slicestops, slicecontent, tail)

File ~/micromamba/envs/awkward-docs/lib/python3.10/site-packages/awkward/contents/listarray.py:544, in ListArray._getitem_next_jagged(self, slicestarts, slicestops, slicecontent, tail)
    535 assert (
    536     outoffsets.nplike is self._backend.index_nplike
    537     and nextcarry.nplike is self._backend.index_nplike
   (...)
    542     and self._stops.nplike is self._backend.index_nplike
    543 )
--> 544 self._maybe_index_error(
    545     self._backend[
    546         "awkward_ListArray_getitem_jagged_apply",
    547         outoffsets.dtype.type,
    548         nextcarry.dtype.type,
    549         slicestarts.dtype.type,
    550         slicestops.dtype.type,
    551         sliceindex.dtype.type,
    552         self._starts.dtype.type,
    553         self._stops.dtype.type,
    554     ](
    555         outoffsets.data,
    556         nextcarry.data,
    557         slicestarts.data,
    558         slicestops.data,
    559         slicestarts.length,
    560         sliceindex.data,
    561         sliceindex.length,
    562         self._starts.data,
    563         self._stops.data,
    564         self._content.length,
    565     ),
    566     slicer=ak.contents.ListArray(slicestarts, slicestops, slicecontent),
    567 )
    568 nextcontent = self._content._carry(nextcarry, True)

File ~/micromamba/envs/awkward-docs/lib/python3.10/site-packages/awkward/contents/content.py:280, in Content._maybe_index_error(self, error, slicer)
    279 message = self._backend.format_kernel_error(error)
--> 280 raise ak._errors.index_error(self, slicer, message)

IndexError: cannot slice ListArray (of length 5) with [[-1], [0], [3], [-1], [1]]: index out of range while attempting to get index -1 (in compiled code: https://github.com/scikit-hep/awkward/blob/awkward-cpp-22/awkward-cpp/src/cpu-kernels/awkward_ListArray_getitem_jagged_apply.cpp#L43)

The above exception was the direct cause of the following exception:

IndexError                                Traceback (most recent call last)
Cell In[6], line 1
----> 1 array[index]

File ~/micromamba/envs/awkward-docs/lib/python3.10/site-packages/awkward/highlevel.py:992, in Array.__getitem__(self, where)
    563 def __getitem__(self, where):
    564     """
    565     Args:
    566         where (many types supported; see below): Index of positions to
   (...)
    990     have the same dimension as the array being indexed.
    991     """
--> 992     with ak._errors.SlicingErrorContext(self, where):
    993         return wrap_layout(
    994             prepare_layout(self._layout[where]), self._behavior, allow_other=True
    995         )

File ~/micromamba/envs/awkward-docs/lib/python3.10/site-packages/awkward/_errors.py:67, in ErrorContext.__exit__(self, exception_type, exception_value, traceback)
     60 try:
     61     # Handle caught exception
     62     if (
     63         exception_type is not None
     64         and issubclass(exception_type, Exception)
     65         and self.primary() is self
     66     ):
---> 67         self.handle_exception(exception_type, exception_value)
     68 finally:
     69     # `_kwargs` may hold cyclic references, that we really want to avoid
     70     # as this can lead to large buffers remaining in memory for longer than absolutely necessary
     71     # Let's just clear this, now.
     72     self._kwargs.clear()

File ~/micromamba/envs/awkward-docs/lib/python3.10/site-packages/awkward/_errors.py:82, in ErrorContext.handle_exception(self, cls, exception)
     80     self.decorate_exception(cls, exception)
     81 else:
---> 82     raise self.decorate_exception(cls, exception)

IndexError: cannot slice ListArray (of length 5) with [[-1], [0], [3], [-1], [1]]: index out of range while attempting to get index -1 (in compiled code: https://github.com/scikit-hep/awkward/blob/awkward-cpp-22/awkward-cpp/src/cpu-kernels/awkward_ListArray_getitem_jagged_apply.cpp#L43)

This error occurred while attempting to slice

    <Array [[], [10, 3, 2, 9], ..., [], [8, 9, -1]] type='5 * var * int64'>

with

    <Array [[-1], [0], [3], [-1], [1]] type='5 * var * int64'>

From the error message, it is clear that for some sublist(s) the index -1 is out of range. This makes sense; some of our sublists are empty, meaning that there is no valid integer to index into them.

Now let’s look at the result of indexing with mask_identity=True.

index = ak.argmax(array, keepdims=True, axis=-1, mask_identity=True)

Because it contains an option type, index already satisfies rule (2) in Building an awkward index, and we do not need to convert it to a ragged array. We can see that this index succeeds:

array[index]
[[None],
 [10],
 [12],
 [None],
 [9]]
----------------------
type: 5 * var * ?int64

Here, the missing values in the index array correspond to missing values in the output array.

Indexing with missing sublists#

Ragged indexing also supports using None in place of empty sublists within an index. For example, given the following array

array = ak.Array(
    [
        [10, 3, 2, 9],
        [4, 5, 5, 12, 6],
        [],
        [8, 9, -1],
    ]
)
array
[[10, 3, 2, 9],
 [4, 5, 5, 12, 6],
 [],
 [8, 9, -1]]
---------------------
type: 4 * var * int64

let’s use build a ragged index to pull out some particular values. Rather than using empty lists, we can use None to mask out sublists that we don’t care about:

array[
    [
        [0, 1],
        None,
        [],
        [2],
    ],
]
[[10, 3],
 None,
 [],
 [-1]]
-----------------------------
type: 4 * option[var * int64]

If we compare this with simply providing an empty sublist,

array[
    [
        [0, 1],
        [],
        [],
        [2],
    ],
]
[[10, 3],
 [],
 [],
 [-1]]
---------------------
type: 4 * var * int64

we can see that the None value introduces an option-type into the final result. None values can be used at any level in the index array to introduce an option-type at that depth in the result.