How to normalize an array in NumPy to a unit vector?

If you're using scikit-learn you can use sklearn.preprocessing.normalize:

import numpy as np
from sklearn.preprocessing import normalize

x = np.random.rand(1000)*10
norm1 = x / np.linalg.norm(x)
norm2 = normalize(x[:,np.newaxis], axis=0).ravel()
print np.all(norm1 == norm2)
# True

I would agree that it were nice if such a function was part of the included batteries. But it isn't, as far as I know. Here is a version for arbitrary axes, and giving optimal performance.

import numpy as np

def normalized(a, axis=-1, order=2):
    l2 = np.atleast_1d(np.linalg.norm(a, order, axis))
    l2[l2==0] = 1
    return a / np.expand_dims(l2, axis)

A = np.random.randn(3,3,3)
print(normalized(A,0))
print(normalized(A,1))
print(normalized(A,2))

print(normalized(np.arange(3)[:,None]))
print(normalized(np.arange(3)))

You can specify ord to get the L1 norm. To avoid zero division I use eps, but that's maybe not great.

def normalize(v):
    norm=np.linalg.norm(v, ord=1)
    if norm==0:
        norm=np.finfo(v.dtype).eps
    return v/norm