to answer your question s is only a 1d array ... (even if you did actually transpose it ... which you did not)

>>> u,s,v = linalg.svd(A)
>>> s
array([ 0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,
        0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.])
>>>

for selecting a submatrix I think this does what you want ... there may be a better way

>>> rows = range(10,15)
>>> cols = range(5,8)
>>> A[rows][:,cols]
array([[ 0.,  0.,  0.],
       [ 0.,  0.,  0.],
       [ 0.,  0.,  0.],
       [ 0.,  0.,  0.],
       [ 0.,  0.,  0.]])

or probably better

>>> A[15:32, 2:7]
array([[ 0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.],
       [ 0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.],
       [ 0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.],
       [ 0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.],
       [ 0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.],
       [ 0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.],
       [ 0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.],
       [ 0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.],
       [ 0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.],
       [ 0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.],
       [ 0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.],
       [ 0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.],
       [ 0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.],
       [ 0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.],
       [ 0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.],
       [ 0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.],
       [ 0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.]])

Your test is incorrect: for i,j=0,0 your M2[]= assignments just overwrite the same matrix block.

The reason you get the symmetric matrix when using M1 is because you assign the M1 values in a single loop.

if you would split the loop into two:

for x in range(n):
      M1[i:i+n,j+x] = m[x]
for x in range(n): 
      M1[j+x,i:i+n] = m[x]

The M1 will be obviously the same as M2.

So Summarizing, the following code works (equivalent to your M2 calculation) but ! it will only work if there is no overlap between blocks above and below the diagonal. if there is you have to decide what to do there

xs=np.arange(4).reshape(2,2)
ys=np.zeros((7,7))
ys[i:i+n,j:j+n]=xs
ys[j:j+n,i:i+n]=xs.T
print ys
>> array([[ 0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.],
       [ 0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  1.,  0.,  0.],
       [ 0.,  0.,  0.,  2.,  3.,  0.,  0.],
       [ 0.,  0.,  2.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.],
       [ 0.,  1.,  3.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.],
       [ 0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.],
       [ 0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.]])

Give np.ix_ a try:

Y[np.ix_([0,3],[0,3])]

This returns your desired result:

In [25]: Y = np.arange(16).reshape(4,4)
In [26]: Y[np.ix_([0,3],[0,3])]
Out[26]:
array([[ 0,  3],
       [12, 15]])

For part 1, from NumPy for MATLAB Users, there are examples showing both read-only and mutable access to arbitrary slices.

The read-only pattern is similar to what you already describe, A[:, m][m]. This slices the columns first, then the rows, and provides a read-only view of the returned data.

To obtain clean indices for mutating the sub-array, a convenience function is provided, np.ix_. It will stitch together its arguments into an R-like or MATLAB-like slice:

indxs = np.ix_([1,3], [1,3])
A[indxs] = B

The reason behind this is that NumPy follows certain shape-conformability rules (called "broadcasting" rules) about how to infer the shapes you intended based on the shapes present in the data. When NumPy does this for a row index and column index pair, it tries to pair them up element-wise.

So A[[1, 3], [1, 3]] under NumPy's chosen conventions, is interpreted as "Fetch for me the value of A at index (1,1) and at index (3,3)." Which is different than the conventions for this same syntax in MATLAB, Octave, or R.

If you want to get around this manually, without np.ix_, you still can, but you must write down your indices to take advantage of NumPy's broadcasting rules. What this means is you have to give NumPy a reason to believe that you want a 2x2 grid of indices instead of a 1x2 list of two specific points.

You can trick it into believing this by making your row entries into lists themselves: rows = [[1], [3]]. Now when NumPy examines the shape of this (1 x 2 instead of 1 x nothing) it will say, 'aha, the columns had better also be 1 x 2' and automatically promote the list of columns to match individually with each possible row. That's why this also will work:

A[[[1], [3]], [1, 3]] = B

For the second part of your question, the issue is that you want to let NumPy know that your array of [False, True, False, True] is a boolean array and should not be implicitly cast as any other type of array.

This can be done in many ways, but one easy way is to construct an np.array of your boolean values, and its dtype will be bool:

indxs = np.array([False, True, False, True])
print A[:, indxs][indxs] # remember, this one is read only

A[np.ix_(indxs, indxs)] = B

Another helpful NumPy convenience tool is np.s_, which is not a function (it is an instance of numpy.lib.index_tricks.IndexExpression) but can be used kind of like one.

np.s_ allows you to use the element-getting syntax (called getitem syntax in Python, after the __getitem__ method that any new-style class instances will have). By way of example:

In [60]: np.s_[[1,3], [1,3]]
Out[60]: ([1, 3], [1, 3])

In [61]: np.s_[np.ix_([1,3], [1,3])]
Out[61]: 
(array([[1],
       [3]]), array([[1, 3]]))

In [62]: np.s_[:, [1,3]]
Out[62]: (slice(None, None, None), [1, 3])

In [63]: np.s_[:, :]
Out[63]: (slice(None, None, None), slice(None, None, None))

In [64]: np.s_[-1:1:-2, :]
Out[64]: (slice(-1, 1, -2), slice(None, None, None))

So np.s_ basically just mirrors back to what the slice index object will look like if you were to place it inside the square brackets in order to access some array's data.

In particular, the first two of these np.s_ examples shows you the difference between plain A[[1,3], [1,3]] and the use of np.ix_([1,3], [1,3]) and how they result in different slices.

There are several ways to get submatrix in numpy:

In [35]: ri = [0,2]
    ...: ci = [2,3]
    ...: a[np.reshape(ri, (-1, 1)), ci]
Out[35]: 
array([[ 2,  3],
       [10, 11]])

In [36]: a[np.ix_(ri, ci)]
Out[36]: 
array([[ 2,  3],
       [10, 11]])

In [37]: s=a[np.ix_(ri, ci)]

In [38]: np.may_share_memory(a, s)
Out[38]: False

note that the submatrix you get is a new copy, not a view of the original mat.

Here is how you can do it:

>>> A[3:5, 3:5] = B
>>> A
array([[ 1. ,  1. ,  1. ,  1. ,  1. ],
       [ 1. ,  1. ,  1. ,  1. ,  1. ],
       [ 1. ,  1. ,  1. ,  1. ,  1. ],
       [ 1. ,  1. ,  1. ,  0.1,  0.2],
       [ 1. ,  1. ,  1. ,  0.3,  0.4]])

Use numpy as follow to create a n x m matrix (assuming input_set is a list)

import numpy as np

input_matrix = np.array(input_set).reshape(n,m)

Listed in this post is a generic approach to get a list of submatrices with given shape. Based on the order of submatrices being row (C-style) or column major (fortran-way), you would have two choices. Here's the implementation with np.reshape , np.transpose and np.array_split -

def split_submatrix(x,submat_shape,order='C'):
    p,q = submat_shape      # Store submatrix shape
    m,n = x.shape

    if np.any(np.mod(x.shape,np.array(submat_shape))!=0):
        raise Exception('Input array shape is not divisible by submatrix shape!')

    if order == 'C':
        x4D = x.reshape(-1,p,n/q,q).transpose(0,2,1,3).reshape(-1,p,q)
        return np.array_split(x4D,x.size/(p*q),axis=0)

    elif order == 'F':
        x2D = x.reshape(-1,n/q,q).transpose(1,0,2).reshape(-1,q)
        return np.array_split(x2D,x.size/(p*q),axis=0)

    else:
        print "Invalid output order."
        return x

Sample run with a modified sample input -

In [201]: x
Out[201]: 
array([[5, 2, 5, 6, 5, 6, 1, 5],
       [1, 1, 8, 4, 4, 5, 2, 5],
       [4, 1, 6, 5, 6, 4, 6, 1],
       [5, 3, 7, 0, 5, 8, 6, 5],
       [7, 7, 0, 6, 5, 2, 5, 4],
       [3, 4, 2, 5, 0, 7, 5, 0]])

In [202]: split_submatrix(x,(3,4))
Out[202]: 
[array([[[5, 2, 5, 6],
         [1, 1, 8, 4],
         [4, 1, 6, 5]]]), array([[[5, 6, 1, 5],
         [4, 5, 2, 5],
         [6, 4, 6, 1]]]), array([[[5, 3, 7, 0],
         [7, 7, 0, 6],
         [3, 4, 2, 5]]]), array([[[5, 8, 6, 5],
         [5, 2, 5, 4],
         [0, 7, 5, 0]]])]

In [203]: split_submatrix(x,(3,4),order='F')
Out[203]: 
[array([[5, 2, 5, 6],
        [1, 1, 8, 4],
        [4, 1, 6, 5]]), array([[5, 3, 7, 0],
        [7, 7, 0, 6],
        [3, 4, 2, 5]]), array([[5, 6, 1, 5],
        [4, 5, 2, 5],
        [6, 4, 6, 1]]), array([[5, 8, 6, 5],
        [5, 2, 5, 4],
        [0, 7, 5, 0]])]