The idea is that there be a short-hand for creating arrays as there is for matrices: np.mat('.2 .7 .1; .3 .5 .2; .1 .1 .9') It was suggested in GitHub issue #4817 <https://github.com/numpy/numpy/issues/4817> in light that it would be beneficial to beginners and to presenters during demonstrations. In GitHub pull request #484 <https://github.com/numpy/numpy/pull/4845>, I implemented this as the np.arr function. Does anyone have any feedback on the API details? Some examples from my implementation follow.
np.arr('3; 4; 5') array([[3], [4], [5]])
np.arr('3; 4; 5', dtype=float) array([[ 3.], [ 4.], [ 5.]])
np.arr('1 0 0; 0 1 0; 0 0 1') array([[1, 0, 0], [0, 1, 0], [0, 0, 1]])
np.arr('4, 5; 6, 7') array([[4, 5], [6, 7]])