On Thu, Jul 31, 2014 at 11:46 PM, David Cournapeau <cournape@gmail.com> wrote:

The docstring at the beginning of the module is still relevant AFAIK: it was about decreasing import times. See http://mail.scipy.org/pipermail/numpy-discussion/2009-October/045981.html

On Fri, Aug 1, 2014 at 10:27 AM, Charles R Harris <charlesr.harris@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi All,

The _inspect.py function looks like a numpy version of the python inspect function. ISTR that is was a work around for problems with the early python versions, but that would have been back in 2009.

Thoughts?

It's only used in one function.

def get_object_signature(obj):
    """
    Get the signature from obj
    """
    try:
        sig = formatargspec(*getargspec(obj))
    except TypeError as errmsg:
        sig = ''
#        msg = "Unable to retrieve the signature of %s '%s'\n"\
#              "(Initial error message: %s)"
#        warnings.warn(msg % (type(obj),
#                             getattr(obj, '__name__', '???'),
#                             errmsg))
    return sig

Where a local import would do as well. It also has bugs, so evidently isn't called often ;)

Chuck