tf.Variable

TensorFlow 2 version View source on GitHub

Class Variable

See the Variables Guide.

Inherits From: Variable

Aliases:

A variable maintains state in the graph across calls to run(). You add a variable to the graph by constructing an instance of the class Variable.

The Variable() constructor requires an initial value for the variable, which can be a Tensor of any type and shape. The initial value defines the type and shape of the variable. After construction, the type and shape of the variable are fixed. The value can be changed using one of the assign methods.

If you want to change the shape of a variable later you have to use an assign Op with validate_shape=False.

Just like any Tensor, variables created with Variable() can be used as inputs for other Ops in the graph. Additionally, all the operators overloaded for the Tensor class are carried over to variables, so you can also add nodes to the graph by just doing arithmetic on variables.

import tensorflow as tf

# Create a variable.
w = tf.Variable(<initial-value>, name=<optional-name>)

# Use the variable in the graph like any Tensor.
y = tf.matmul(w, ...another variable or tensor...)

# The overloaded operators are available too.
z = tf.sigmoid(w + y)

# Assign a new value to the variable with `assign()` or a related method.
w.assign(w + 1.0)
w.assign_add(1.0)

When you launch the graph, variables have to be explicitly initialized before you can run Ops that use their value. You can initialize a variable by running its initializer op, restoring the variable from a save file, or simply running an assign Op that assigns a value to the variable. In fact, the variable initializer op is just an assign Op that assigns the variable's initial value to the variable itself.

# Launch the graph in a session.
with tf.compat.v1.Session() as sess:
    # Run the variable initializer.
    sess.run(w.initializer)
    # ...you now can run ops that use the value of 'w'...

The most common initialization pattern is to use the convenience function global_variables_initializer() to add an Op to the graph that initializes all the variables. You then run that Op after launching the graph.

# Add an Op to initialize global variables.
init_op = tf.compat.v1.global_variables_initializer()

# Launch the graph in a session.
with tf.compat.v1.Session() as sess:
    # Run the Op that initializes global variables.
    sess.run(init_op)
    # ...you can now run any Op that uses variable values...

If you need to create a variable with an initial value dependent on another variable, use the other variable's initialized_value(). This ensures that variables are initialized in the right order.

All variables are automatically collected in the graph where they are created. By default, the constructor adds the new variable to the graph collection GraphKeys.GLOBAL_VARIABLES. The convenience function global_variables() returns the contents of that collection.

When building a machine learning model it is often convenient to distinguish between variables holding the trainable model parameters and other variables such as a global step variable used to count training steps. To make this easier, the variable constructor supports a trainable=<bool> parameter. If True, the new variable is also added to the graph collection GraphKeys.TRAINABLE_VARIABLES. The convenience function trainable_variables() returns the contents of this collection. The various Optimizer classes use this collection as the default list of variables to optimize.

WARNING: tf.Variable objects by default have a non-intuitive memory model. A Variable is represented internally as a mutable Tensor which can non-deterministically alias other Tensors in a graph. The set of operations which consume a Variable and can lead to aliasing is undetermined and can change across TensorFlow versions. Avoid writing code which relies on the value of a Variable either changing or not changing as other operations happen. For example, using Variable objects or simple functions thereof as predicates in a tf.cond is dangerous and error-prone:

v = tf.Variable(True)
tf.cond(v, lambda: v.assign(False), my_false_fn)  # Note: this is broken.

Here, adding use_resource=True when constructing the variable will fix any nondeterminism issues:

v = tf.Variable(True, use_resource=True)
tf.cond(v, lambda: v.assign(False), my_false_fn)

To use the replacement for variables which does not have these issues:

__init__

View source

__init__(
    initial_value=None,
    trainable=None,
    collections=None,
    validate_shape=True,
    caching_device=None,
    name=None,
    variable_def=None,
    dtype=None,
    expected_shape=None,
    import_scope=None,
    constraint=None,
    use_resource=None,
    synchronization=tf.VariableSynchronization.AUTO,
    aggregation=tf.VariableAggregation.NONE,
    shape=None
)

Creates a new variable with value initial_value.

The new variable is added to the graph collections listed in collections, which defaults to [GraphKeys.GLOBAL_VARIABLES].

If trainable is True the variable is also added to the graph collection GraphKeys.TRAINABLE_VARIABLES.

This constructor creates both a variable Op and an assign Op to set the variable to its initial value.

Args:

  • initial_value: A Tensor, or Python object convertible to a Tensor, which is the initial value for the Variable. The initial value must have a shape specified unless validate_shape is set to False. Can also be a callable with no argument that returns the initial value when called. In that case, dtype must be specified. (Note that initializer functions from init_ops.py must first be bound to a shape before being used here.)
  • trainable: If True, also adds the variable to the graph collection GraphKeys.TRAINABLE_VARIABLES. This collection is used as the default list of variables to use by the Optimizer classes. Defaults to True, unless synchronization is set to ON_READ, in which case it defaults to False.
  • collections: List of graph collections keys. The new variable is added to these collections. Defaults to [GraphKeys.GLOBAL_VARIABLES].
  • validate_shape: If False, allows the variable to be initialized with a value of unknown shape. If True, the default, the shape of initial_value must be known.
  • caching_device: Optional device string describing where the Variable should be cached for reading. Defaults to the Variable's device. If not None, caches on another device. Typical use is to cache on the device where the Ops using the Variable reside, to deduplicate copying through Switch and other conditional statements.
  • name: Optional name for the variable. Defaults to 'Variable' and gets uniquified automatically.
  • variable_def: VariableDef protocol buffer. If not None, recreates the Variable object with its contents, referencing the variable's nodes in the graph, which must already exist. The graph is not changed. variable_def and the other arguments are mutually exclusive.
  • dtype: If set, initial_value will be converted to the given type. If None, either the datatype will be kept (if initial_value is a Tensor), or convert_to_tensor will decide.
  • expected_shape: A TensorShape. If set, initial_value is expected to have this shape.
  • import_scope: Optional string. Name scope to add to the Variable. Only used when initializing from protocol buffer.
  • constraint: An optional projection function to be applied to the variable after being updated by an Optimizer (e.g. used to implement norm constraints or value constraints for layer weights). The function must take as input the unprojected Tensor representing the value of the variable and return the Tensor for the projected value (which must have the same shape). Constraints are not safe to use when doing asynchronous distributed training.
  • use_resource: whether to use resource variables.
  • synchronization: Indicates when a distributed a variable will be aggregated. Accepted values are constants defined in the class tf.VariableSynchronization. By default the synchronization is set to AUTO and the current DistributionStrategy chooses when to synchronize.
  • aggregation: Indicates how a distributed variable will be aggregated. Accepted values are constants defined in the class tf.VariableAggregation.
  • shape: (optional) The shape of this variable. If None, the shape of initial_value will be used. When setting this argument to tf.TensorShape(None) (representing an unspecified shape), the variable can be assigned with values of different shapes.

Raises:

  • ValueError: If both variable_def and initial_value are specified.
  • ValueError: If the initial value is not specified, or does not have a shape and validate_shape is True.
  • RuntimeError: If eager execution is enabled.

Child Classes

class SaveSliceInfo

Properties

aggregation

constraint

Returns the constraint function associated with this variable.

Returns:

The constraint function that was passed to the variable constructor. Can be None if no constraint was passed.

device

The device of this variable.

dtype

The DType of this variable.

graph

The Graph of this variable.

initial_value

Returns the Tensor used as the initial value for the variable.

Note that this is different from initialized_value() which runs the op that initializes the variable before returning its value. This method returns the tensor that is used by the op that initializes the variable.

Returns:

A Tensor.

initializer

The initializer operation for this variable.

name

The name of this variable.

op

The Operation of this variable.

shape

The TensorShape of this variable.

Returns:

A TensorShape.

synchronization

trainable

Methods

__abs__

View source

__abs__(
    x,
    name=None
)

Computes the absolute value of a tensor.

Given a tensor of integer or floating-point values, this operation returns a tensor of the same type, where each element contains the absolute value of the corresponding element in the input.

Given a tensor x of complex numbers, this operation returns a tensor of type float32 or float64 that is the absolute value of each element in x. All elements in x must be complex numbers of the form \(a + bj\). The absolute value is computed as \( \sqrt{a^2 + b^2}\). For example:

x = tf.constant([[-2.25 + 4.75j], [-3.25 + 5.75j]])
tf.abs(x)  # [5.25594902, 6.60492229]

Args:

  • x: A Tensor or SparseTensor of type float16, float32, float64, int32, int64, complex64 or complex128.
  • name: A name for the operation (optional).

Returns:

A Tensor or SparseTensor the same size, type, and sparsity as x with absolute values. Note, for complex64 or complex128 input, the returned Tensor will be of type float32 or float64, respectively.

__add__

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__add__(
    a,
    *args,
    **kwargs
)

Dispatches to add for strings and add_v2 for all other types.

__and__

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__and__(
    a,
    *args,
    **kwargs
)

Returns the truth value of x AND y element-wise.

NOTE: math.logical_and supports broadcasting. More about broadcasting here

Args:

  • x: A Tensor of type bool.
  • y: A Tensor of type bool.
  • name: A name for the operation (optional).

Returns:

A Tensor of type bool.

__div__

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__div__(
    a,
    *args,
    **kwargs
)

Divide two values using Python 2 semantics.

Used for Tensor.div.

Args:

  • x: Tensor numerator of real numeric type.
  • y: Tensor denominator of real numeric type.
  • name: A name for the operation (optional).

Returns:

x / y returns the quotient of x and y.

__eq__

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__eq__(other)

Compares two variables element-wise for equality.

__floordiv__

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__floordiv__(
    a,
    *args,
    **kwargs
)

Divides x / y elementwise, rounding toward the most negative integer.

The same as tf.compat.v1.div(x,y) for integers, but uses tf.floor(tf.compat.v1.div(x,y)) for floating point arguments so that the result is always an integer (though possibly an integer represented as floating point). This op is generated by x // y floor division in Python 3 and in Python 2.7 with from __future__ import division.

x and y must have the same type, and the result will have the same type as well.

Args:

  • x: Tensor numerator of real numeric type.
  • y: Tensor denominator of real numeric type.
  • name: A name for the operation (optional).

Returns:

x / y rounded down.

Raises:

  • TypeError: If the inputs are complex.

__ge__

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__ge__(
    a,
    *args,
    **kwargs
)

Returns the truth value of (x >= y) element-wise.

NOTE: math.greater_equal supports broadcasting. More about broadcasting here

Args:

  • x: A Tensor. Must be one of the following types: float32, float64, int32, uint8, int16, int8, int64, bfloat16, uint16, half, uint32, uint64.
  • y: A Tensor. Must have the same type as x.
  • name: A name for the operation (optional).

Returns:

A Tensor of type bool.

__getitem__

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__getitem__(
    var,
    slice_spec
)

Creates a slice helper object given a variable.

This allows creating a sub-tensor from part of the current contents of a variable. See tf.Tensor.getitem for detailed examples of slicing.

This function in addition also allows assignment to a sliced range. This is similar to __setitem__ functionality in Python. However, the syntax is different so that the user can capture the assignment operation for grouping or passing to sess.run(). For example,

import tensorflow as tf
A = tf.Variable([[1,2,3], [4,5,6], [7,8,9]], dtype=tf.float32)
with tf.compat.v1.Session() as sess:
  sess.run(tf.compat.v1.global_variables_initializer())
  print(sess.run(A[:2, :2]))  # => [[1,2], [4,5]]

  op = A[:2,:2].assign(22. * tf.ones((2, 2)))
  print(sess.run(op))  # => [[22, 22, 3], [22, 22, 6], [7,8,9]]

Note that assignments currently do not support NumPy broadcasting semantics.

Args:

  • var: An ops.Variable object.
  • slice_spec: The arguments to Tensor.getitem.

Returns:

The appropriate slice of "tensor", based on "slice_spec". As an operator. The operator also has a assign() method that can be used to generate an assignment operator.

Raises:

  • ValueError: If a slice range is negative size.
  • TypeError: TypeError: If the slice indices aren't int, slice, ellipsis, tf.newaxis or int32/int64 tensors.

__gt__

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__gt__(
    a,
    *args,
    **kwargs
)

Returns the truth value of (x > y) element-wise.

NOTE: math.greater supports broadcasting. More about broadcasting here

Args:

  • x: A Tensor. Must be one of the following types: float32, float64, int32, uint8, int16, int8, int64, bfloat16, uint16,