Hi Alan On Thu, 06 Feb 2014 08:46:49 -0500, Alan G Isaac wrote:
You may ask, where would this possibly matter? The answer: in the undergraduate classroom.
As a lecturer, I understand where you are coming from, but I don't think we can ultimately make API decisions based on teachability. The ndarray constructor already has behavior defined for strings: np.array('1 2 3; 4 5 6') array('1 2 3; 4 5 6', dtype='|S12') So we can't easily change that now. The best is probably to write a small utility library for your students that help them to easily construct arrays. Also, if you teach them inside an IPython Notebook, they can easily type np.ndarray([[1, 2], [3, 4]]) which is quite readable and makes use of standard Python objects. Regards Stéfan