Victoria G. Laidler schrieb:
I understand that for interactive use, short names are more convenient; but shouldn't they be available aliases to the more general names? Since numpy is primarily a software library, I wouldn't expect it to sacrifice a standard best-practice in order to make things more convenient for interactive use.
I don't necessarily agree that numpy should aim to be primarily a library, but I'm with you concerning the alias idea. However, iirc there was some discussion recently on this list about the dual solution (long names as well as short ones in parallel), and some important numpy people had some reservations, although I don't remember exactly what those were -- probably some Python Zen issues ("there should be only one way to get to Rome", was that it? -- just kidding).
If the concern is for for matlab compatibility, maybe a synonym module numpy.as_matlab could define all the synonyms, that matlab users could then use? That would make more sense to me than inflicting obscure matlab names on the rest of the user community.
From superficially browsing through the numpy guide my subjective impression is that function names are mostly pretty short. So maybe the alias thing should work the other way around, making long names available in a module numpy.long_names_for_typing_addicts (again, a bad joke...)
cheers, Sven