What is the reason for limited functionality of in-place sort in Numpy?

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1

In Numpy 1.21.5, this form of sort is allowed:

a = np.sort(a, axis=None)

but an equivalent in-place version is not:

a.sort(axis=None)

axis has to have int type in this case. Is there a reason for this?

2

numpy.sort(array) returns a sorted copy of the array, so it is easy to flatten it with axis=None.

array.sort operates in-place. As far as I know, there is no in-place version of flatten.

3

It seems a.shape=(a.size,) can flatten in-place, and then a.sort() can be used:

>>> import numpy
>>> a = numpy.array([[1,20,3],[4,15,6]])
>>> numpy.sort(a, axis=None)
array([ 1,  3,  4,  6, 15, 20])
>>> numpy.sort(a)
array([[ 1,  3, 20],
       [ 4,  6, 15]])
>>> a.flatten()
array([ 1, 20,  3,  4, 15,  6])
>>> a
array([[ 1, 20,  3],
       [ 4, 15,  6]])
>>> a.shape=(a.size,)
>>> a
array([ 1, 20,  3,  4, 15,  6])
>>> a.sort()
>>> a
array([ 1,  3,  4,  6, 15, 20])