Optional sort_results

1 files changed, 13 insertions, 6 deletions

diff --git a/src/python/gudhi/point_cloud/knn.py b/src/python/gudhi/point_cloud/knn.py
index bb7757f2..8369f1f8 100644
--- a/src/python/gudhi/point_cloud/knn.py
+++ b/src/python/gudhi/point_cloud/knn.py
@@ -33,6 +33,9 @@ class KNN:
             p (float): norm L^p on input points (including numpy.inf) if metric is "minkowski". Defaults to 2.
             n_jobs (int): number of jobs to schedule for parallel processing of nearest neighbors on the CPU.
                 If -1 is given all processors are used. Default: 1.
+            sort_results (bool): if True, then distances and indices of each point are
+                sorted on return, so that the first column contains the closest points.
+                Otherwise, neighbors are returned in an arbitrary order. Defaults to True.
             kwargs: additional parameters are forwarded to the backends.
         """
         self.k = k
@@ -115,18 +118,22 @@ class KNN:
             X = numpy.array(X)
             if self.return_index:
                 neighbors = numpy.argpartition(X, k - 1)[:, 0:k]
-                distances = numpy.take_along_axis(X, neighbors, axis=-1)
-                ngb_order = numpy.argsort(distances, axis=-1)
-                neighbors = numpy.take_along_axis(neighbors, ngb_order, axis=-1)
+                if self.params.get("sort_results", True):
+                    X = numpy.take_along_axis(X, neighbors, axis=-1)
+                    ngb_order = numpy.argsort(X, axis=-1)
+                    neighbors = numpy.take_along_axis(neighbors, ngb_order, axis=-1)
+                else:
+                    ngb_order = neighbors
                 if self.return_distance:
-                    distances = numpy.take_along_axis(distances, ngb_order, axis=-1)
+                    distances = numpy.take_along_axis(X, ngb_order, axis=-1)
                     return neighbors, distances
                 else:
                     return neighbors
             if self.return_distance:
                 distances = numpy.partition(X, k - 1)[:, 0:k]
-                # partition is not guaranteed to sort the lower half, although it often does
-                distances.sort(axis=-1)
+                if self.params.get("sort_results"):
+                    # partition is not guaranteed to sort the lower half, although it often does
+                    distances.sort(axis=-1)
                 return distances
             return None