Python in a Nutshell

Name

zeros

Synopsis

zeros(shapetuple,typecode=Int,savespace=False)

Returns an array a such that a .shape== shapetuple. All of a’s elements are 0.

Note that, by default, identity, ones, and zeros all return arrays whose type is Int. Be sure to specify explicitly a different type code, such as Float, if that is what you really want. For example, be sure to avoid the following common mistake:

a = zeros(3)
a[0] = 0.3                    # a is array([0,0,0])

Since a is Int in this snippet, the 0.3 we assign to one of its items gets truncated to the integer 0. Instead, you typically want something closer to the following:

a = zeros(3,Float)
a[0] = 0.3                    # a is array([0.3,0.,0.])

Here, we have explicitly specified Float as the type code for a, and therefore no truncation occurs when we assign 0.3 to one of a’s items.