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DOC: update Series() docstring about copy behaviour #63341

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DOC: update Series() docstring about copy behaviour #63341

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DOC: update Series() docstring about copy behaviour
jorisvandenbossche Dec 12, 2025
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rephrase
jorisvandenbossche Dec 12, 2025
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9 changes: 7 additions & 2 deletions pandas/core/series.py
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Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -265,8 +265,13 @@ class Series(base.IndexOpsMixin, NDFrame): # type: ignore[misc]
See the :ref:`user guide <basics.dtypes>` for more usages.
name : Hashable, default None
The name to give to the Series.
copy : bool, default False
Copy input data. Only affects Series or 1d ndarray input. See examples.
copy : bool, default None
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@jorisvandenbossche jorisvandenbossche Dec 12, 2025 •
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Related to #63144, the question is what to put here in the docstring ..

copy=None is closest to what is in the signature, but is not really meaningful by itself. Of course, the behaviour also depends on the intput, so writing that it defaults to either True or False will also be misleading for some cases.
(eg the current default False in the docstring above is not correct for array input)

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@rhshadrach rhshadrach Dec 12, 2025

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I'm fine with None here, I think the behavior is too complex to give a meaningful description in the space allowed.

Whether to copy input data. Only affects array or Series/Index input,
because for other input (e.g. a list) a new array is created anyway.
By default, will copy if the input data is a numpy or pandas array.
For Series/Index input, a shallow copy of the data is made by default.
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@rhshadrach rhshadrach Dec 12, 2025 •
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It's not quite clear to me what happens if you set it to False in the Series/Index case.

Set to False to avoid copying array input, at your own risk (if you
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@rhshadrach rhshadrach Dec 12, 2025

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nit: no comma.

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Set to False to avoid copying array input, at your own risk (if you
Set to False to avoid copying array input at your own risk (if you

know the input data won't be modified elsewhere).

See Also
--------
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