On 8/31/06, Tom Denniston <tom.denniston@alum.dartmouth.org > wrote:
But i have hetergenious arrays that have numbers and strings and NoneType, etc.

Take for instance:

In [11]: numpy.array([numpy.array([1,'A', None]),
numpy.array([2,2,'Some string'])], dtype=object)
Out[11]:
array([[1, A, None],
[2, 2, Some string]], dtype=object)

In [12]: numpy.array([numpy.array([1,'A', None]),
numpy.array([2,2,'Some string'])], dtype=object).shape
Out[12]: (2, 3)

Works fine in Numeric and pre beta numpy but in beta numpy versions i get:

I think you want:

In [59]: a = array([array([1,'A', None],dtype=object),array([2,2,'Some string'],dtype=object)])

In [60]: a.shape
Out[60]: (2, 3)

Which makes good sense to me.

OK, I changed my mind. I think you are right and this is a bug. Using svn revision 3098 I get

I n [2]: a = array([1,'A', None])
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
exceptions.TypeError Traceback (most recent call last)

/home/charris/<ipython console>

TypeError: expected a readable buffer object

Which is different than you get with beta 1 in any case. I think array should cast the objects in the list to the first common dtype, object in this case. So the previous should be shorthand for:

In [3]: a = array([1,'A', None], dtype=object)

In [4]: a.shape
Out[4]: (3,)

Chuck