tf.Tensor

A tf.Tensor represents a multidimensional array of elements.

All elements are of a single known data type.

When writing a TensorFlow program, the main object that is manipulated and passed around is the tf.Tensor.

A tf.Tensor has the following properties:

  • a single data type (float32, int32, or string, for example)
  • a shape

TensorFlow supports eager execution and graph execution. In eager execution, operations are evaluated immediately. In graph execution, a computational graph is constructed for later evaluation.

TensorFlow defaults to eager execution. In the example below, the matrix multiplication results are calculated immediately.

# Compute some values using a Tensor
c = tf.constant([[1.0, 2.0], [3.0, 4.0]])
d = tf.constant([[1.0, 1.0], [0.0, 1.0]])
e = tf.matmul(c, d)
print(e)
tf.Tensor(
[[1. 3.]
 [3. 7.]], shape=(2, 2), dtype=float32)

Note that during eager execution, you may discover your Tensors are actually of type EagerTensor. This is an internal detail, but it does give you access to a useful function, numpy:

type(e)
<class '...ops.EagerTensor'>
print(e.numpy())
  [[1. 3.]
   [3. 7.]]

In TensorFlow, tf.functions are a common way to define graph execution.

A Tensor's shape (that is, the rank of the Tensor and the size of each dimension) may not always be fully known. In tf.function definitions, the shape may only be partially known.

Most operations produce tensors of fully-known shapes if the shapes of their inputs are also fully known, but in some cases it's only possible to find the shape of a tensor at execution time.

A number of specialized tensors are available: see tf.Variable, tf.constant, tf.placeholder, tf.sparse.SparseTensor, and tf.RaggedTensor.

a = np.array([1, 2, 3])
b = tf.constant(a)
a[0] = 4
print(b)  # tf.Tensor([4 2 3], shape=(3,), dtype=int64)

For more on Tensors, see the guide.

dtype The DType of elements in this tensor.
name

ndim

shape Returns a tf.TensorShape that represents the shape of this tensor.

t = tf.constant([1,2,3,4,5])
t.shape
TensorShape([5])

tf.Tensor.shape is equivalent to tf.Tensor.get_shape().

In a tf.function or when building a model using tf.keras.Input, they return the build-time shape of the tensor, which may be partially unknown.

A tf.TensorShape is not a tensor. Use tf.shape(t) to get a tensor containing the shape, calculated at runtime.

See tf.Tensor.get_shape(), and tf.TensorShape for details and examples.

Methods

eval

View source

eval(
    feed_dict=None, session=None
)

Evaluates this tensor in a Session.

Calling this method will execute all preceding operations that produce the inputs needed for the operation that produces this tensor.

Args
feed_dict A dictionary that maps Tensor objects to feed values. See tf.Session.run for a description of the valid feed values.
session (Optional.) The Session to be used to evaluate this tensor. If none, the default session will be used.

Returns
A numpy array corresponding to the value of this tensor.

experimental_ref

View source

experimental_ref()

DEPRECATED FUNCTION

get_shape

View source

get_shape() -> tf.TensorShape

Returns a tf.TensorShape that represents the shape of this tensor.

In eager execution the shape is always fully-known.

a = tf.constant([[1.0, 2.0, 3.0], [4.0, 5.0, 6.0]])
print(a.shape)
(2, 3)

tf.Tensor.get_shape() is equivalent to tf.Tensor.shape.

When executing in a tf.function or building a model using tf.keras.Input, Tensor.shape may return a partial shape (including None for unknown dimensions). See tf.TensorShape for more details.

inputs = tf.keras.Input(shape = [10])
# Unknown batch size
print(inputs.shape)
(None, 10)

The shape is computed using shape inference functions that are registered for each tf.Operation.

The returned tf.TensorShape is determined at build time, without executing the underlying kernel. It is not a tf.Tensor. If you need a shape tensor, either convert the tf.TensorShape to a tf.constant, or use the tf.shape(tensor) function, which returns the tensor's shape at execution time.

This is useful for debugging and providing early errors. For example, when tracing a tf.function, no ops are being executed, shapes may be unknown (See the Concrete Functions Guide for details).

@tf.function
def my_matmul(a, b):
  result = a@b
  # the `print` executes during tracing.
  print("Result shape: ", result.shape)
  return result

The shape inference functions propagate shapes to the extent possible:

f = my_matmul.get_concrete_function(
  tf.TensorSpec([None,3]),
  tf.TensorSpec([3,5]))
Result shape: (None, 5)

Tracing may fail if a shape missmatch can be detected:

cf = my_matmul.get_concrete_function(
  tf.TensorSpec([None,3]),
  tf.TensorSpec([4,5]))
Traceback (most recent call last):

ValueError: Dimensions must be equal, but are 3 and 4 for 'matmul' (op:
'MatMul') with input shapes: [?,3], [4,5].

In some cases, the inferred shape may have unknown dimensions. If the caller has additional information about the values of these dimensions, tf.ensure_shape or Tensor.set_shape() can be used to augment the inferred shape.

@tf.function
def my_fun(a):
  a = tf.ensure_shape(a, [5, 5])
  # the `print` executes during tracing.
  print("Result shape: ", a.shape)
  return a
 
cf = my_fun.get_concrete_function(
  tf.TensorSpec([None, None]))
Result shape: (5, 5)

Returns
A tf.TensorShape representing the shape of this tensor.

ref

View source

ref()

Returns a hashable reference object to this Tensor.

The primary use case for this API is to put tensors in a set/dictionary. We can't put tensors in a set/dictionary as tensor.__hash__() is no longer available starting Tensorflow 2.0.

The following will raise an exception starting 2.0

x = tf.constant(5)
y = tf.constant(10)
z = tf.constant(10)
tensor_set = {x, y, z}
Traceback (most recent call last):

TypeError: Tensor is unhashable. Instead, use tensor.ref() as the key.
tensor_dict = {x: 'five', y: 'ten'}
Traceback (most recent call last):

TypeError: Tensor is unhashable. Instead, use tensor.ref() as the key.

Instead, we can use tensor.ref().

tensor_set = {x.ref(), y.ref(), z.ref()}
x.ref() in tensor_set
True
tensor_dict = {x.ref(): 'five', y.ref(): 'ten', z.ref(): 'ten'}
tensor_dict[y.ref()]
'ten'

Also, the reference object provides .deref() function that returns the original Tensor.

x = tf.constant(5)
x.ref().deref()
<tf.Tensor: shape=(), dtype=int32, numpy=5>

set_shape

View source

set_shape(
    shape
)

Updates the shape of this tensor.

With eager execution this operates as a shape assertion. Here the shapes match:

t = tf.constant([[1,2,3]])
t.set_shape([1, 3])

Passing a None in the new shape allows any value for that axis:

t.set_shape([1,None])

An error is raised if an incompatible shape is passed.

t.set_shape([1,5])
Traceback (most recent call last):

ValueError: Tensor's shape (1, 3) is not compatible with supplied
shape [1, 5]

When executing in a tf.function, or building a model using tf.keras.Input, Tensor.set_shape will merge the given shape with the current shape of this tensor, and set the tensor's shape to the merged value (see tf.TensorShape.merge_with for details):

t = tf.keras.Input(shape=[None, None, 3])
print(t.shape)
(None, None, None, 3)

Dimensions set to None are not updated:

t.set_shape([None, 224, 224, None])
print(t.shape)
(None, 224, 224, 3)

The main use case for this is to provide additional shape information that cannot be inferred from the graph alone.

For example if you know all the images in a dataset have shape [28,28,3] you can set it with tf.set_shape:

@tf.function
def load_image(filename):
  raw = tf.io.read_file(filename)
  image = tf.image.decode_png(raw, channels=3)
  # the `print` executes during tracing.
  print("Initial shape: ", image.shape)
  image.set_shape([28, 28, 3])
  print("Final shape: ", image.shape)
  return image

Trace the function, see the Concrete Functions Guide for details.

cf = load_image.get_concrete_function(
    tf.TensorSpec([], dtype=tf.string))
Initial shape:  (None, None, 3)
Final shape: (28,