python - Numpy: For every element in one array, find the index in another array

Question

I have two 1D arrays, x & y, one smaller than the other. I'm trying to find the index of every element of y in x.

I've found two naive ways to do this, the first is slow, and the second memory-intensive.

The slow way

indices= []
for iy in y:
    indices += np.where(x==iy)[0][0]

The memory hog

xe = np.outer([1,]*len(x), y)
ye = np.outer(x, [1,]*len(y))
junk, indices = np.where(np.equal(xe, ye))

Is there a faster way or less memory intensive approach? Ideally the search would take advantage of the fact that we are searching for not one thing in a list, but many things, and thus is slightly more amenable to parallelization. Bonus points if you don't assume that every element of y is actually in x.

Answer 1

I want to suggest one-line solution:

indices = np.where(np.in1d(x, y))[0]

The result is an array with indices for x array which corresponds to elements from y which were found in x.

One can use it without numpy.where if needs.