How to properly mask a numpy 2D array?

Is this what you are looking for?

import numpy as np
x[~np.array(mask)]
# array([[1, 2],
#        [2, 3]])

Or from numpy masked array:

newX = np.ma.array(x, mask = np.column_stack((mask, mask)))
newX

# masked_array(data =
#  [[1 2]
#  [2 3]
#  [-- --]],
#              mask =
#  [[False False]
#  [False False]
#  [ True  True]],
#        fill_value = 999999)

Your x is 3x2:

In [379]: x
Out[379]: 
array([[1, 2],
       [2, 3],
       [3, 4]])

Make a 3 element boolean mask:

In [380]: rowmask=np.array([False,False,True])

That can be used to select the rows where it is True, or where it is False. In both cases the result is 2d:

In [381]: x[rowmask,:]
Out[381]: array([[3, 4]])

In [382]: x[~rowmask,:]
Out[382]: 
array([[1, 2],
       [2, 3]])

This is without using the MaskedArray subclass. To make such array, we need a mask that matches x in shape. There isn't provision for masking just one dimension.

In [393]: xmask=np.stack((rowmask,rowmask),-1)  # column stack

In [394]: xmask
Out[394]: 
array([[False, False],
       [False, False],
       [ True,  True]], dtype=bool)

In [395]: np.ma.MaskedArray(x,xmask)
Out[395]: 
masked_array(data =
 [[1 2]
 [2 3]
 [-- --]],
             mask =
 [[False False]
 [False False]
 [ True  True]],
       fill_value = 999999)

Applying compressed to that produces a raveled array: array([1, 2, 2, 3])

Since masking is element by element, it could mask one element in row 1, 2 in row 2 etc. So in general compressing, removing the masked elements, will not yield a 2d array. The flattened form is the only general choice.

np.ma makes most sense when there's a scattering of masked values. It isn't of much value if you want want to select, or deselect, whole rows or columns.

===============

Here are more typical masked arrays:

In [403]: np.ma.masked_inside(x,2,3)
Out[403]: 
masked_array(data =
 [[1 --]
 [-- --]
 [-- 4]],
             mask =
 [[False  True]
 [ True  True]
 [ True False]],
       fill_value = 999999)

In [404]: np.ma.masked_equal(x,2)
Out[404]: 
masked_array(data =
 [[1 --]
 [-- 3]
 [3 4]],
             mask =
 [[False  True]
 [ True False]
 [False False]],
       fill_value = 2)

In [406]: np.ma.masked_outside(x,2,3)
Out[406]: 
masked_array(data =
 [[-- 2]
 [2 3]
 [3 --]],
             mask =
 [[ True False]
 [False False]
 [False  True]],
       fill_value = 999999)

Since none of these solutions worked for me, I thought to write down what solution did, maybe it will useful for somebody else. I use python 3.x and I worked on two 3D arrays. One, which I call data_3D contains float values of recordings in a brain scan, and the other, template_3D contains integers which represent regions of the brain. I wanted to choose those values from data_3D corresponding to an integer region_code as per template_3D:

my_mask = np.in1d(template_3D, region_code).reshape(template_3D.shape)
data_3D_masked = data_3D[my_mask]

which gives me a 1D array of only relevant recordings.

With np.where you can do all sorts of things:

x_maskd = np.where(mask, x, 0)