Lazy concatenation of arrays
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- Python
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Description
Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
Concatenating xarray objects forces the data to load. I recently learned about this object allowing lazy indexing into an DataArrays/sets without using dask. Concatenation along a single dimension is the inverse operation of slicing, so it seems natural to also support it. Also, concatenating along dimensions (e.g. "run"/"simulation"/"ensemble") can be a common merging workflow.
Describe the solution you'd like
xr.concat([a, b], dim=...) does not load any data in a or b.
Describe alternatives you've considered
One could rename the variables in a and b to allow them to be merged (e.g. a['air_temperature'] -> "air_temperature_a"), but it's more natural to make a new dimension.
Additional context
This is useful when not using dask for performance reasons (e.g. using another parallelism engine like Apache Beam).
Contributor guide
First steps
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Research direction
Start with xarray/core/indexing.py at the linked lazy-indexing object, then trace the xr.concat([a, b], dim=...) entry point. Done means concatenating along one dimension does not load data from either input, including for non-dask usage.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Assessment
- Tech stack
- python
- Domain
- data
- Issue type
- Feature
- Difficulty
- 4/5
- Estimated time
- 3-5 days
- Activity status
- Stale
- Clarity
- Mostly clear
- Newbie friendliness
- 48/100