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Asked: 2026-05-31T10:56:31+00:00

I was wondering why many functions – especially in numpy – utilize tuples as

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I was wondering why many functions – especially in numpy – utilize tuples as function parameters?

e.g.:

a = numpy.ones( (10, 5) )

What could possibly be the use for that? Why not simply have something such as the following, since clearly the first parameters will always denote the size of the array?

a = numpy.ones(10, 5)

Is it because there might be additional parameters, such as dtype? even if so, 

a = numpy.ones(10, 5, dtype=numpy.int)

seems much cleaner to me, than using the convoluted tuple convention.

Thanks for your replies

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Because you want to be able to do:

    a = numpy.ones(other_array.shape)

    and other_array.shape is a tuple. There are a few functions that are not consistent with this and work as you’ve described, e.g. numpy.random.rand()

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