On Sat, Feb 23, 2013 at 1:33 PM, Robert Kern <robert.kern@gmail.com> wrote:
On Sat, Feb 23, 2013 at 7:25 PM, Nathaniel Smith <njs@pobox.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Feb 23, 2013 at 3:38 PM, Till Stensitzki <mail.till@gmx.de> wrote:
>> Hello,
>> i know that the array object is already crowded, but i would like
>> to see the abs method added, especially doing work on the console.
>> Considering that many much less used functions are also implemented
>> as a method, i don't think adding one more would be problematic.
>
> My gut feeling is that we have too many methods on ndarray, not too
> few, but in any case, can you elaborate? What's the rationale for why
> np.abs(a) is so much harder than a.abs(), and why this function and
> not other unary functions?

Or even abs(a).

Well, that just calls a method:

In [1]: ones(3).__abs__()
Out[1]: array([ 1.,  1.,  1.])

Which shows the advantage of methods, they provide universal function hooks.

Chuck