Python Shortest String in NumPy Array
To find the shortest string in a given NumPy array, say arr
, you can use the min(arr, key=len)
function that determines the minimum by comparing the length of the array elements using the len()
function as a key for comparison.
import numpy as np arr = np.array(['Alice', 'Bob', 'Carl']) print(min(arr, key=len)) # Bob
You can find more about the powerful min()
function in our detailed blog tutorial:
👉 Recommended Tutorial: Python Minimum Function and NumPy Min and Max on 1D arrays
Python Length of Shortest String in NumPy Array
To find the length of the shortest string in a NumPy array arr
, use the min(arr, key=len)
function to obtain the string with the minimum length and then pass this min string into the len()
function to obtain the number of characters.
len(min(arr, key=len))
Here’s a more detailed code example of a simple 1D NumPy Array:
import numpy as np arr = np.array(['Alice', 'Bob', 'Carl']) # Print Shortest String: print(min(arr, key=len)) # Bob # Print Length of Shortest String print(len(min(arr, key=len))) # 3
Get Shortest String from NumPy Axis (2D, Column or Row)
To get the shortest string from a certain NumPy array axis (e.g., row or column), first use simple NumPy slicing and indexing to get that axis (e.g., arr[0, :]
to get the first row) and pass it into the min()
function with the key
argument set to the length function like so: min(arr[0, :], key=len)
.
Here’s an example to get the shortest string of the first row of a 2D array:
import numpy as np arr = np.array([['Alice', 'Bob', 'Carl'], ['Ann', 'Zoe', 'Leonard']]) print(min(arr[0, :], key=len)) # Bob
Here’s an example to get the shortest string of the third column of a 2D array:
print(min(arr[:, 2], key=len)) # Carl
You get the idea. 🙂
If you want to get the shortest string from the whole NumPy array, not only from a column or row or axis, first flatten it and then pass the flattened array into the min()
function using the key=len
argument.
👉 Recommended Tutorial: How to Flatten a NumPy Array?
Also, check out our tutorial on finding the maximum string in a NumPy array.

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