Is .persist in place or like .compute? about xarray HOT 3 CLOSED

Ah perfect, than my observation is what is expected.

To your question: yes I think I would find a return value documentation helpful.
As a minimum I would add a line similar to what you can find on the docs for load

Unlike compute, the original dataset is modified and returned.

or compute

Unlike load, the original dataset is left unaltered.

I would just copy the latter from compute and add it to persist?

I can also add the return value but technically load also returns the updated Dataset. I could just not add it in the documentation though?

from xarray.

in general, there are only very few in-place methods (.load and .update are the only examples I can think of). As far as the code goes: it creates a (shallow) copy, then replaces the arrays in that copy with the persisted ones. So yes, persist does not modify the original object.

A PR would be welcome, but I wonder how to best point this out: since it's the general rule, I feel functions that don't follow it should stress that more... maybe adding return value description would help already?

from xarray.

see also #6837 for a discussion about the difference between compute and load.

from xarray.