Then the only solution I see is the current one: default behaviour is view, and when you want a copy yoy copy explicitly. The inverse is not possible, once you made a copy you can't make it behave like a view anymore.
I don't think it is necessary to create the other object _from_ the default one. You could have copy behavior be the default, and if you want a view of some array you simply request one explicitly with .view, .sub, or whatever.
Let's make this explicit. Given the following four expressions, 1) array 2) array[0] 3) array.view 4) array.view[0] what would the types of each of these objects be according to your proposal? What would the indexing behaviour of those types be? I don't see how you can avoid having either two types or two different behaviours within one type. Konrad. -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Konrad Hinsen | E-Mail: hinsen@cnrs-orleans.fr Centre de Biophysique Moleculaire (CNRS) | Tel.: +33-2.38.25.56.24 Rue Charles Sadron | Fax: +33-2.38.63.15.17 45071 Orleans Cedex 2 | Deutsch/Esperanto/English/ France | Nederlands/Francais -------------------------------------------------------------------------------