intnan

Integer data types lack special values for -inf, inf and NaN. Especially NaN as an indication for missing data would be useful in many scientific contexts.

Of course there is numpy.ma.MaskedArray around for the very same reason. Nevertheless, it might sometimes be annoying to carry a separate mask array around — and masked arrays are notoriously slow. In those cases, using a set of numpy-compatible functions for the same job will do just fine.

This package provides such an implementation for a set of standard numpy functions, treating integer arrays in such a way, that a designated sentinel value resembles NaN:

• For signed integer types, the lowest negative value (np.iinfo(dtype).min) is used as the missing value, e.g. -2147483648 for int32. Large negative values are chosen deliberately, so that python indexing (from the end) is unlikely to run into them accidentally.
• For unsigned integer types, the value 0 is used.
• For float and string types, the corresponding NaN, empty bytes or empty string values are used.
• For object arrays, None is used.

Installation

pip install intnan

or with uv:

uv pip install intnan

The package requires Python 3.12+ and works with numpy 2.4+. All public functions are fully type annotated using numpy.typing.

Usage

Simply import the package and use the provided functions like their numpy counterparts:

import numpy as np
import intnan

a = np.array([1, -(2**31), 3], dtype=np.int32)  # -(2**31) marks a missing value

intnan.isnan(a)  # array([False,  True, False])
intnan.nansum(a)  # 4
intnan.nanmean(a)  # 2.0
intnan.fix_invalid(a)  # array([1, 0, 3], dtype=int32)

Functions

The following functions are provided by intnan. Where applicable, their semantics mirror the corresponding numpy function, with missing values ignored instead of propagated.

Missing value handling:

• nanval(x) — return the missing value for a given array or data type
• isnan(x) — boolean mask of missing values, works on arrays and scalars
• fix_invalid(x, copy=True, fill_value=0) — replace missing values
• asfloat(x) — convert to a float array, missing values become NaN
• asint(x) — convert to an integer array, missing values become the integer missing value
• anynan(x), allnan(x) — test for the presence of missing values

Reductions:

• nanmax(x), nanmin(x) and their index counterparts nanargmax(x), nanargmin(x)
• nansum(x), nanprod(x), nancumsum(x), nancumprod(x)
• nanmean(x), nanmedian(x), nanvar(x, ddof=0), nanstd(x, ddof=0)

Element-wise binary operations:

• nanmaximum(x, y), nanminimum(x, y) — as np.maximum/np.minimum, but picking the valid value wherever one input is missing

Comparison:

• nanequal(x, y) — element-wise equality, treating missing values as an ordinary value
• nanclose(x, y, delta=sys.float_info.epsilon) — element-wise closeness with tolerance delta

Performance

The library ships two interchangeable implementations:

• intnan_np — based purely on vectorized numpy operations
• intnan_numba — JIT-compiled with numba for functions that allow major speed gains

Both provide the identical API. On import, the numba implementation is automatically selected whenever numba is installed and importable; otherwise the numpy implementation is used. This makes numba an optional runtime dependency. Compiled numba kernels are cached on disk, so no recompilation overhead occurs after the first use.

To get the accelerated implementation, simply install numba alongside:

pip install intnan numba

Development

The project uses uv for dependency management:

git clone https://github.com/ml31415/intnan
cd intnan
uv sync          # create virtualenv and install all dependencies
uv run pre-commit install  # optional: run lint, format and type checks on every commit
uv run pytest    # run the test suite
uv run ruff check . && uv run ruff format --check .  # lint and format check
uv run mypy      # type check

Tests are run against both implementations and a range of dtypes (int32, int64, float32, float64) in the CI on Python 3.12 through 3.14.

License

BSD 3-Clause, see LICENSE.txt.