Jonathan Taylor wrote:
+1 for some sort of float. I am a little confused as to why Float64 is a particularly good choice. Can someone explain in more detail? Presumably this is the most sensible ctype and translates to a python float well?
O.K. I'm convinced that we should change to float as the default, but *everywhere* as Sasha says. We will provide two tools to make the transition easier. 1) The numpy.oldnumeric sub-package will contain definitions of changed functions that keep the old defaults (integer). This is what convertcode replaces for import Numeric calls so future users who make the transition won't really notice. 2) A function/script that can be run to convert all type-less uses of the changed functions to explicitly insert dtype=int. Yes, it will be a bit painful (I made the change and count 6 failures in NumPy tests and 34 in SciPy). But, it sounds like there is support for doing it. And yes, we must do it prior to 1.0 if we do it at all. Comments? -Travis