[python] How to convert list of numpy arrays into single numpy array?

Suppose I have ;

LIST = [[array([1, 2, 3, 4, 5]), array([1, 2, 3, 4, 5],[1,2,3,4,5])] # inner lists are numpy arrays

I try to convert;

array([[1, 2, 3, 4, 5],
       [1, 2, 3, 4, 5],
       [1, 2, 3, 4, 5])

I am solving it by iteration on vstack right now but it is really slow for especially large LIST

What do you suggest for the best efficient way?

I checked some of the methods for speed performance and find that there is no difference! The only difference is that using some methods you must carefully check dimension.

Timing:

|------------|----------------|-------------------|
|            | shape (10000)  |  shape (1,10000)  |
|------------|----------------|-------------------|
| np.concat  |    0.18280     |      0.17960      |
|------------|----------------|-------------------|
|  np.stack  |    0.21501     |      0.16465      |
|------------|----------------|-------------------|
| np.vstack  |    0.21501     |      0.17181      |
|------------|----------------|-------------------|
|  np.array  |    0.21656     |      0.16833      |
|------------|----------------|-------------------|

As you can see I tried 2 experiments - using np.random.rand(10000) and np.random.rand(1, 10000) And if we use 2d arrays than np.stack and np.array create additional dimension - result.shape is (1,10000,10000) and (10000,1,10000) so they need additional actions to avoid this.

Code:

from time import perf_counter
from tqdm import tqdm_notebook
import numpy as np
l = []
for i in tqdm_notebook(range(10000)):
    new_np = np.random.rand(10000)
    l.append(new_np)



start = perf_counter()
stack = np.stack(l, axis=0 )
print(f'np.stack: {perf_counter() - start:.5f}')

start = perf_counter()
vstack = np.vstack(l)
print(f'np.vstack: {perf_counter() - start:.5f}')

start = perf_counter()
wrap = np.array(l)
print(f'np.array: {perf_counter() - start:.5f}')

start = perf_counter()
l = [el.reshape(1,-1) for el in l]
conc = np.concatenate(l, axis=0 )
print(f'np.concatenate: {perf_counter() - start:.5f}')

Starting in NumPy version 1.10, we have the method stack. It can stack arrays of any dimension (all equal):

# List of arrays.
L = [np.random.randn(5,4,2,5,1,2) for i in range(10)]

# Stack them using axis=0.
M = np.stack(L)
M.shape # == (10,5,4,2,5,1,2)
np.all(M == L) # == True

M = np.stack(L, axis=1)
M.shape # == (5,10,4,2,5,1,2)
np.all(M == L) # == False (Don't Panic)

# This are all true    
np.all(M[:,0,:] == L[0]) # == True
all(np.all(M[:,i,:] == L[i]) for i in range(10)) # == True

Enjoy,