doc/source/reference/array_api.rst
.. _array-api-standard-compatibility:
Array API standard compatibility
The NumPy 2.3.0 main namespace as well as the numpy.fft and numpy.linalg
namespaces are compatible with the
2024.12 version <https://data-apis.org/array-api/2024.12/index.html>__
of the Python array API standard.
NumPy aims to implement support for the future versions of the standard
backwards compatibility policy <NEP23>.For usage guidelines for downstream libraries and end users who want to write code that will work with both NumPy and other array libraries, we refer to the documentation of the array API standard itself and to code and developer-focused documentation in SciPy and scikit-learn.
Note that in order to use standard-complaint code with older NumPy versions
(< 2.0), the array-api-compat <https://github.com/data-apis/array-api-compat>__ package may be useful. For
testing whether NumPy-using code is only using standard-compliant features
rather than anything NumPy-specific, the array-api-strict <https://github.com/data-apis/array-api-strict>__ package can be used.
.. admonition:: History
NumPy 1.22.0 was the first version to include support for the array API
standard, via a separate ``numpy.array_api`` submodule. This module was
marked as experimental (it emitted a warning on import) and removed in
NumPy 2.0 because full support (2022.12 version [1]_) was included in
the main namespace.
:ref:`NEP 47 <NEP47>` and
:ref:`NEP 56 <NEP56>`
describe the motivation and scope for implementing the array API standard
in NumPy.
NumPy installs an entry point <https://packaging.python.org/en/latest/specifications/entry-points/>__
that can be used for discovery purposes::
>>> from importlib.metadata import entry_points
>>> entry_points(group='array_api', name='numpy')
[EntryPoint(name='numpy', value='numpy', group='array_api')]
Note that leaving out name='numpy' will cause a list of entry points to be
returned for all array API standard compatible implementations that installed
an entry point.
.. rubric:: Footnotes
.. [1] With a few very minor exceptions, as documented in
:ref:NEP 56 <NEP56>.
The sum, prod and trace behavior adheres to the 2023.12 version
instead, as do function signatures; the only known incompatibility that may
remain is that the standard forbids unsafe casts for in-place operators
while NumPy supports those.
NumPy implements the array API inspection utilities <https://data-apis.org/array-api/latest/API_specification/inspection.html>__.
These functions can be accessed via the __array_namespace_info__()
function, which returns a namespace containing the inspection utilities.
.. currentmodule:: numpy
.. autosummary:: :toctree: generated
array_namespace_info