On Sat, Aug 4, 2012 at 7:11 PM, Stefan Krah <stefan@bytereef.org> wrote:
You are right that the PEP does not explicitly state that rule for strides. However, NULL always has an implied meaning:
format=NULL -> treat the buffer as unsigned bytes.
shape=NULL -> one-dimensional AND treat the buffer as unsigned bytes.
strides=NULL -> C-contiguous
I think relaxing the NULL rule for strides would complicate things, since it would introduce yet another special case.
I took Jeff's question as being slightly different and applying in the following situations: 1. If the consumer has NOT requested format data, can the provider return accurate format data anyway, if that's easier than returning NULL but is consistent with doing so? 2. The consumer has NOT requested shape data, can shape data be provided anyway, if that's easier than returning NULL but is consistent with doing so? 3. The consumer has NOT requested strides data, can strides data be provided anyway, if that's easier than returning NULL but is consistent with doing so? That's what I believe is Jeff's main question: is a provider that always publishes complete information, even if the consumer doesn't ask for it, in compliance with the API, so long as any cases where the consumer's stated assumption (as indicated by the request flags) would be violated are handled as errors instead of successfully populating the buffer? Cheers, Nick. -- Nick Coghlan | ncoghlan@gmail.com | Brisbane, Australia