Hello all, I've introduced PR 5548 <https://github.com/numpy/numpy/pull/5548> which, through more careful safety checks, allows views of object arrays. However, I had to make 'partial views' into structured arrays irreversible, and I want to check with the list that that's ok. With the PR, if you only view certain fields of an array you cannot take a 'reverse' view of the resulting object to get back the original array: >>> arr = np.array([(1,2),(4,5)], dtype=[('A', 'i'), ('B', 'i')]) >>> varr = arr.view({'names': ['A'], 'formats': ['i'], ... 'itemsize': arr.dtype.itemsize}) >>> varr.view(arr.dtype) TypeError: view would access data parent array doesn't own Ie., with this PR you can only take views into parts of an array that have fields. This was necessary in order to guarantee that we never interpret memory containing a python Object as another type, which could cause a segfault. I have a more extensive discussion & motivation in the PR, including an alternative idea. So does this limitation seem reasonable? Cheers, Allan