Backport PR #47372 on branch 1.4.x (REGR: revert behaviour change for concat with empty/all-NaN data) (#47472)

Backport PR #47372: REGR: revert behaviour change for concat with empty/all-NaN data

Co-authored-by: Joris Van den Bossche <[email protected]>

Author: simonjayhawkins

doc/source/whatsnew/v1.4.0.rst

@@ -271,6 +271,9 @@ the given ``dayfirst`` value when the value is a delimited date string (e.g.
 Ignoring dtypes in concat with empty or all-NA columns
 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
 
+.. note::
+    This behaviour change has been reverted in pandas 1.4.3.
+
 When using :func:`concat` to concatenate two or more :class:`DataFrame` objects,
 if one of the DataFrames was empty or had all-NA values, its dtype was
 *sometimes* ignored when finding the concatenated dtype.  These are now
@@ -301,9 +304,15 @@ object, the ``np.nan`` is retained.
 
 *New behavior*:
 
-.. ipython:: python
+.. code-block:: ipython
+
+    In [4]: res
+    Out[4]:
+                       bar
+    0  2013-01-01 00:00:00
+    1                  NaN
+
 
-    res
 
 .. _whatsnew_140.notable_bug_fixes.value_counts_and_mode_do_not_coerce_to_nan:
 

doc/source/whatsnew/v1.4.3.rst

@@ -10,6 +10,17 @@ including other versions of pandas.
 
 .. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
+.. _whatsnew_143.concat:
+
+Behaviour of ``concat`` with empty or all-NA DataFrame columns
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+The behaviour change in version 1.4.0 to stop ignoring the data type
+of empty or all-NA columns with float or object dtype in :func:`concat`
+(:ref:`whatsnew_140.notable_bug_fixes.concat_with_empty_or_all_na`) has been
+reverted (:issue:`45637`).
+
+
 .. _whatsnew_143.regressions:
 
 Fixed regressions

pandas/core/dtypes/missing.py

@@ -14,6 +14,7 @@
 import pandas._libs.missing as libmissing
 from pandas._libs.tslibs import (
     NaT,
+    Period,
     iNaT,
 )
 from pandas._typing import (
@@ -668,3 +669,40 @@ def is_valid_na_for_dtype(obj, dtype: DtypeObj) -> bool:
 
     # fallback, default to allowing NaN, None, NA, NaT
     return not isinstance(obj, (np.datetime64, np.timedelta64, Decimal))
+
+
+def isna_all(arr: ArrayLike) -> bool:
+    """
+    Optimized equivalent to isna(arr).all()
+    """
+    total_len = len(arr)
+
+    # Usually it's enough to check but a small fraction of values to see if
+    #  a block is NOT null, chunks should help in such cases.
+    #  parameters 1000 and 40 were chosen arbitrarily
+    chunk_len = max(total_len // 40, 1000)
+
+    dtype = arr.dtype
+    if dtype.kind == "f":
+        checker = nan_checker
+
+    elif dtype.kind in ["m", "M"] or dtype.type is Period:
+        # error: Incompatible types in assignment (expression has type
+        # "Callable[[Any], Any]", variable has type "ufunc")
+        checker = lambda x: np.asarray(x.view("i8")) == iNaT  # type: ignore[assignment]
+
+    else:
+        # error: Incompatible types in assignment (expression has type "Callable[[Any],
+        # Any]", variable has type "ufunc")
+        checker = lambda x: _isna_array(  # type: ignore[assignment]
+            x, inf_as_na=INF_AS_NA
+        )
+
+    return all(
+        # error: Argument 1 to "__call__" of "ufunc" has incompatible type
+        # "Union[ExtensionArray, Any]"; expected "Union[Union[int, float, complex, str,
+        # bytes, generic], Sequence[Union[int, float, complex, str, bytes, generic]],
+        # Sequence[Sequence[Any]], _SupportsArray]"
+        checker(arr[i : i + chunk_len]).all()  # type: ignore[arg-type]
+        for i in range(0, total_len, chunk_len)
+    )