beam_search with a beam_width=1

[skalinin]

Hi! Could you please tell, why does a beam_search with a beam_width equal to 1 not give the same result as best_path?

For example

import numpy as np
from ctc_decoder import best_path, beam_search

chars = 'ab'
mat = np.array([[0.8, 0, 0.2], [0.4, 0.0, 0.6], [0.8, 0, 0.2]])

print(f'Best path: "{best_path(mat, chars)}"')
print(f'Beam search: "{beam_search(mat, chars, beam_width=1)}"')

Gives: Best path: "aa" Beam search: "a"

Thanks!

[githubharald]

because it's not the same algorithm and is not expected to give the same results (even though TF says so in its documentation, which is wrong, see here: https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/issues/21051).

[skalinin]

Thanks for the answer!