On Mon, Jan 29, 2018 at 7:44 PM, Allan Haldane
I suggest that if we want to allow either means over fields, or conversion of a n-D structured array to an n+1-D regular ndarray, we should add a dedicated function to do so in numpy.lib.recfunctions which does not depend on the binary representation of the array.
IIUC, the core use-case of structured dtypes is binary compatibility with external systems (arrays of C structs, mostly) -- at least that's how I use them :-) In which case, "conversion of a n-D structured array to an n+1-D regular ndarray" is an important feature -- actually even more important if you don't use recarrays So yes, let's have a utility to make that easy. as for recarrays -- are we that far from having them be robust and useful? in which case, why not keep them around, fix the few issues, but explicitly not try to extend them into more dataframe-like domains -CHB -- Christopher Barker, Ph.D. Oceanographer Emergency Response Division NOAA/NOS/OR&R (206) 526-6959 voice 7600 Sand Point Way NE (206) 526-6329 fax Seattle, WA 98115 (206) 526-6317 main reception Chris.Barker@noaa.gov