It might be useful to have a Table type where there is a header of some sort to keep track, for each column of the column name name and the datatype in that column, so that the user could, optionally specify validity checks.

Another useful type for arrays representing physical values would be an array that keeps vectors for each dimension with index values. For instance, an object representing temperature at a given time in a given location would consist in data = N x M array of Float64 = [ [ 23, 34, 23], [ 31, 28,29] ] first_axis = N array of time = [ "01/01/2004", "02/01/2004" ] second_axis = M array of location = [ "Paris", "New York" ] All slicing operation would equivalently slice the corresponding axis. Assignment between arrays would be axis coherent (assigning "Paris" in one array to "Paris" in another while putting NaN or 0 if there is no correspondance). If indexing could also be done via component of *_axis, it would be also useful. Several field of applications could benefit of this (econometrics, monte carlo simulation, physical simulation, time series,...). In fact most of real data consist usually of values for tuples of general indices (e.g. temparature@("01/01/2004","Paris")) Hmmm, I think I was just thinking aloud :-) ======================================================= This message is confidential. It may also be privileged or otherwise protected by work product immunity or other legal rules. If you have received it by mistake please let us know by reply and then delete it from your system; you should not copy it or disclose its contents to anyone. All messages sent to and from Electrabel may be monitored to ensure compliance with internal policies and to protect our business. Emails are not secure and cannot be guaranteed to be error free as they can be intercepted, amended, lost or destroyed, or contain viruses. Anyone who communicates with us by email is taken to accept these risks. http://www.electrabel.be/homepage/general/disclaimer_EN.asp =======================================================