[PYTHON MATRIX-SIG] Release 0.20 of matrix object is available

[Jim Fulton, U.S. Geological Survey]

One minor note on these naming discussions.

It is necessary for names to be unique without regard to case.  That is,
although Python is case sensitive, some of the operating systems it functions
in are not, and since module names are found in the local file systems, the
names like array and Array may conflict.

Jim

On Dec 8,  4:05pm, Paul. Dubois wrote:
> Subject: Re: [PYTHON MATRIX-SIG] Release 0.20 of matrix object is availabl
> A followup to the remarks about precision.
> In fact, Fortran 90 goes to considerable lengths to try to improve this
> situation but it isn't REAL*8 that is the solution. Fortran 90 uses
> something called a Kind specifier, and Kind specifiers are calculable
> from desired characteristics at compile time. Actually knowing that
> something is a certain number of bits doesn't tell you what you need to
> know, as there is a tradeoff between precision and dynamic range.
> Anyway, you end up saying REAL(kind) x, y, z.
>
> I believe Jim has made fundamentally the right decision in deciding that
> the abstraction he is after is "things that store a homogenous bunch of
> stuff in contiguous memory". This would be a parameterized type in other
> languages, such as Eiffel's ARRAY[T], where one actually instantiates
> ARRAY[DOUBLE], ARRAY[INTEGER], ARRAY[CHARACTER], ARRAY[TELEPHONE_BOOK],
> etc. Since a large use of this abstraction is connection to C and
> Fortran libraries, one has to be precise about it in a cross-language
> way and I think the present proposal is correct. The question of what
> language must be used to express this at the Python level is an
> interesting one. While I favor names like IntegerMatrix, ..., reserving
> Matrix to be a "smart" operator that decides on the type from the
> arguments, there is a place for a version with a calculable type or type
> code, so that one can get different things on different platforms with
> the same source by doing tests on the system type.
>
> I think Array is a better name than Matrix and if 'array' weren't
> already taken would have no hesitation in going ahead. If we picked
> Array as the name that is now Matrix, what would we call that which is
> now 'matrix'? ArrayFromSequence ?
>
> --
> Paul F. Dubois, L-472				(510)-422-5426
> Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory		FAX (510)-423-9969
> Livermore, CA 94550				dubois1@llnl.gov
> Consulting: PaulDubois@aol.com
>
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>-- End of excerpt from Paul. Dubois



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