With the ability of subclassing types in recent versions of the Python language, more people will be interested in subclassing Numeric arrays for specific purposes. Still the use of functions instead of methods takes away many of the advantages, the ability of being overloaded. Taking this statement as an example: Numeric.put(myarray, myindices, myvalues) In the current state of affairs, if we wanted to have to statment to work with asparse matrix class derived from a Numeric array, it would have to be something like: Sparse.put(myarray, myindices, myvalues) That is, it forces to the underlaying code to know whether is dealing with Numeric arrays, or some other equivalent class. But it would be much more useful to have simply: myarray.put(myindices, myvalues) which would work regardless of the actual type of myarray, provided it supplied the put() method. This would improve enormously code reusability and extensability. I know that there are certain implementations details that may difficult this (like many functions being implemented in pure Python), but any advances made in this since will be an improvement of the current situation. Also, I know that this example is a little unhappy because numarray will do these things with the __getitem__ and __setitem__ operators. But others could easily be shown. Regards, José Fonseca __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Everything you'll ever need on one web page from News and Sport to Email and Music Charts http://uk.my.yahoo.com