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Difference Between "Hidden" and "Output" in PyTorch LSTM

Last Updated : 23 Jul, 2025

Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) networks are a type of recurrent neural network (RNN) that are widely used for sequence prediction tasks. In PyTorch, the nn.LSTM module is a powerful tool for implementing these networks. However, understanding the difference between the "hidden" and "output" states of an LSTM can be confusing for many. This article aims to clarify these concepts, providing detailed explanations and examples to help you understand how LSTMs work in PyTorch.

The hidden state in an LSTM represents the short-term memory of the network. It contains information about the sequence that has been processed so far and is updated at each time step. The hidden state is crucial for maintaining information across time steps and layers.

Shape: The hidden state h_n has the shape (num_layers * num_directions, batch, hidden_size). This shape indicates that the hidden state is maintained for each layer and direction in the LSTM.

The output of an LSTM is the sequence of hidden states from the last layer for each time step. Unlike the hidden state, which is only the last hidden state for each sequence, the output includes the hidden state for every time step in the sequence.

Shape: The output has the shape (seq_len, batch, num_directions * hidden_size), where seq_len is the length of the input sequence.

• Scope: The hidden state (h_n) is the final hidden state for each element in the batch, while the output contains the hidden states for all time steps in the sequence.
• Usage: The hidden state is often used for tasks that require a summary of the entire sequence, such as classification, while the output is used for tasks that require predictions at each time step, such as sequence generation.

Below is an example of how to implement an LSTM in PyTorch and access the hidden state and output:

import torch
import torch.nn as nn

# Define LSTM parameters
input_size = 10
hidden_size = 20
num_layers = 2
batch_size = 3
seq_len = 5

# Initialize LSTM
lstm = nn.LSTM(input_size, hidden_size, num_layers)

# Create random input tensor
input_tensor = torch.randn(seq_len, batch_size, input_size)

# Initialize hidden and cell states
h0 = torch.zeros(num_layers, batch_size, hidden_size)
c0 = torch.zeros(num_layers, batch_size, hidden_size)

# Forward pass through LSTM
output, (hn, cn) = lstm(input_tensor, (h0, c0))

print("Output shape:", output.shape)  # (seq_len, batch, num_directions * hidden_size)
print("Hidden state shape:", hn.shape)  # (num_layers * num_directions, batch, hidden_size)

Output:

Output shape: torch.Size([5, 3, 20])
Hidden state shape: torch.Size([2, 3, 20])

• Input Tensor: The input tensor has a shape of (seq_len, batch_size, input_size), representing the sequence length, batch size, and input features.
• Hidden and Cell States: Initialized to zeros with shapes (num_layers, batch_size, hidden_size).
• Output and Hidden State: After the forward pass, the output contains the hidden states for all time steps, while hn contains the final hidden state for each sequence in the batch.

• Use Hidden State (h_n): When you need a summary of the entire sequence, such as in classification tasks where the final hidden state is used to make a prediction.
• Use Output: When you need predictions at each time step, such as in sequence-to-sequence tasks where the output at each time step is important.

• Memory Usage: The output tensor can be large, especially for long sequences, so consider memory constraints when processing large datasets.
• Computation: Accessing the output for all time steps can be computationally intensive, so optimize your model accordingly.

Understanding the difference between the hidden state and output in PyTorch's LSTM is crucial for effectively using this powerful neural network architecture. The hidden state provides a summary of the sequence, while the output contains detailed information for each time step.

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