Boolean indexing when elements of mask shape are zero?

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Difficulty
5/5
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Over a week
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35/100
Issue type
Documentation
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Stale
Tech stack
python
Domain
documentation

Research direction

Read the linked Boolean Array Indexing section first, then compare the behaviors shown for NumPy, CuPy, array_api_strict, jax.numpy, PyTorch, and dask.array. Done means the specification explicitly states whether zero-sized boolean mask dimensions are valid and what result or error backends should produce.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

The standard seems to allow elements of a boolean index's shape to be zero.

The size of each dimension in B must equal the size of the corresponding dimension in A or be 0,

But I have read a few times, and I don't think it specifies what should happen in this case.

This returns an empty array in NumPy, CuPy, array_api_strict, and jax.numpy.

import array_api_strict as xp
x = xp.asarray([1, 2, 3])
i = xp.asarray([], dtype=xp.bool)
x[i]  # array([], dtype=int64)

The behavior would follow from the usual rules if the index were integral, but it's not obvious to me that this should work for a boolean index of zero size. Indeed, PyTorch fails with:

IndexError: The shape of the mask [0] at index 0 does not match the shape of the indexed tensor [3] at index 0

and dask.array fails with:

ValueError: operands could not be broadcast together with shapes (3,) (0,)

If the NumPy behavior is desired, does it follow from the usual rule, or is it a special case? Either way, it would help to spell out the desired behavior to ensure consistency among backends.

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