fastnum 0.1.1

Zero-boilerplate converter from raw data (images, text, categories) to numeric NumPy arrays.

FastNum

Zero-boilerplate conversion from raw data to numeric NumPy arrays.

FastNum detects the kind of data you hand it — an image path, a sentence, a category list, or a batch of any of these — and returns the right numeric representation without a single line of configuration.

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Why FastNum?

Most ML preprocessing pipelines repeat the same four patterns:

Input	Desired output
Image file	Float32 pixel array normalised to [0, 1]
Text sentence	Integer token-ID sequence
Flat category list	One-hot matrix
Batch of sentences	Padded token-ID matrix

FastNum collapses all four into one call: fn.to_num(data).

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Installation

pip install fastnum

Or from source:

git clone https://github.com/your-username/fastnum.git
cd fastnum
pip install -e ".[dev]"

Requirements: Python ≥ 3.9, numpy ≥ 1.24, opencv-python ≥ 4.8.

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Quick start

from fastnum import FastNum

fn = FastNum()

# --- Image -----------------------------------------------------------
pixels = fn.to_num("photo.jpg")          # (H, W, 3) float32, values in [0, 1]
pixels = fn.to_num("photo.jpg", image_size=(224, 224))  # resize on the fly

# Batch of images (all resized to the same shape for stacking)
batch = fn.to_num(["a.jpg", "b.jpg"], image_size=(224, 224))  # (2, 224, 224, 3)

# --- Plain text ------------------------------------------------------
tokens = fn.to_num("the cat sat on the mat")   # int32 array of token IDs
print(fn.decode(tokens))                        # → "the cat sat on the mat"

# --- Category list ---------------------------------------------------
labels = ["dog", "cat", "dog", "bird"]
one_hot = fn.to_num(labels)
# array([[0., 1., 0.],
#        [1., 0., 0.],
#        [0., 1., 0.],
#        [0., 0., 1.]], dtype=float32)

# --- Sentence batch --------------------------------------------------
matrix = fn.to_num(["hello world", "foo bar baz"])
# int32 matrix (2, 3), shorter rows are right-padded with pad_token_id

# --- Raw NumPy array -------------------------------------------------
import numpy as np
fn.to_num(np.array([1, 2, 3]))              # cast to float32, no-op otherwise

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API reference

FastNum(pad_token_id=0)

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
pad_token_id	int	0	ID reserved for the [PAD] token. The special token is inserted into the vocabulary at construction time so real words are always assigned different IDs.

to_num(data, image_size=None) → np.ndarray

Parameter	Type	Description
data	str | list[str] | np.ndarray	Input to convert.
image_size	tuple[int, int] | None	Target (H, W) for image resizing.

Return type depends on input:

Input	dtype	Shape
Image path / list of paths	float32	(H, W, C) / (N, H, W, C)
Sentence	int32	(T,)
Category list	float32	(N, num_classes)
Sentence batch	int32	(N, max_len)
np.ndarray	float32	same as input

decode(token_ids) → str

Converts a token-ID sequence back to whitespace-separated text. Padding tokens are silently dropped.

vocab_size → int

Number of entries currently in the vocabulary, including [PAD].

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The [PAD] token and collision safety

FastNum reserves pad_token_id inside the vocabulary at construction time:

self.vocab        = {"[PAD]": pad_token_id}
self.inverse_vocab = {pad_token_id: "[PAD]"}

Because [PAD] occupies a slot before any text is tokenised, _get_or_add assigns new words IDs equal to len(self.vocab), which can never equal pad_token_id again. This means:

• A padded cell in a token matrix will never decode to a real word.
• decode() does not need a special-case filter beyond i != self.pad_token_id — the two sets are disjoint by construction.

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Development

# Run tests with coverage
pytest

# Lint
ruff check fastnum

# Type-check
mypy fastnum

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License

MIT © your-username