[Numpy-discussion] Questions about the array interface.

[Tim Hochberg]

Scott Gilbert wrote:

>--- Chris Barker <Chris.Barker at noaa.gov> wrote:
>  
>
[SNIP]

>
>>As a rule of thumb, I think there will be [more] consumers of arrays
>>than producers, so I'd rather make it easy on the consumers that the 
>>producers, if we need to make such a trade off. Maybe I'm biased, 
>>because I'm a consumer.
>>
>>    
>>
>
>I don't see the trade off.  It will be easy for you either way, but harder
>for array producers (admittedly only a little).
>  
>
I think there is a trade off, but not the one that Chris is worried 
about. It should be easy to hide complexity of dealing with missing 
attributes through the various helper functions. The cost will be in 
speed and will probably be most noticable in C extensions using small 
arrays where the extra code to check if an attribute is present will be 
signifigant.

How signifigant this will be, I'm not sure. And frankly I don't care all 
that much since I generally only use large arrays. However, since one of 
the big faultlines between Numarray and Numeric involves the former's 
relatively poor small array performance, I suspect someone might care.

-tim

>This has to be easier than the situation you have today right?  Imagine the
>code you'd have to write to special case Numeric, scipy.base, Numarray, and
>Python's array module.
>
>  
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