Python in a Nutshell

Name

searchsorted

Synopsis

searchsorted(a,values)

a must be a sorted rank 1 array. searchsorted returns an array of integers s with the same shape as values. Each element of s is the index in a where the corresponding element of values would fit in the sorted order of a. For example:

print Numeric.searchsorted([0,1],
    [0.2,-0.3,0.5,1.3,1.0,0.0,0.3])
# prints: [1 0 1 2 1 0 1]

This specific idiom returns an array with 0 in correspondence to each element x of values when x is less than or equal to 0; 1 when x is greater than 0 and less than or equal to 1; and 2 when x is greater than 1. With slight generalization, and with appropriate thresholds as the elements of sorted array a, this idiom allows very fast classification of what subrange each element x of values falls into.