emptyLike

Create an uninitialized array having the same length and data type as a provided array.

Usage

var emptyLike = require( '@stdlib/array/empty-like' );

emptyLike( x[, dtype] )

Creates an uninitialized array having the same length and data type as a provided array x.

var x = [ 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 ];

var arr = emptyLike( x );
// returns [ 0, 0, 0, 0, 0 ];

By default, the output array data type is inferred from the provided array x. To return an array having a different data type, provide a dtype argument.

var x = [ 1, 1 ];

var arr = emptyLike( x, 'int32' );
// returns <Int32Array>

Notes

In browser environments, the function always returns zero-filled arrays.
If dtype is 'generic', the function always returns a zero-filled array.
In Node.js versions >=3.0.0, the underlying memory of returned typed arrays is not initialized. Memory contents are unknown and may contain sensitive data.

Examples

var dtypes = require( '@stdlib/array/dtypes' );
var zeros = require( '@stdlib/array/zeros' );
var emptyLike = require( '@stdlib/array/empty-like' );

// Create a zero-filled array:
var x = zeros( 4, 'complex128' );

// Get a list of array data types:
var dt = dtypes();

// Generate empty arrays...
var arr;
var i;
for ( i = 0; i < dt.length; i++ ) {
    arr = emptyLike( x, dt[ i ] );
    console.log( arr );
}