[Numpy-discussion] Questions about the array interface.

[Andrew Straw]

Robert Kern wrote:

> Scott Gilbert wrote:
>
>> --- Andrew Straw <strawman at astraw.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Here's a bit of weirdness which has prevented me from using '<' or 
>>> '>' in the past with the struct module.  I'm not guru enough to know 
>>> what's going on, but it has prevented me from being explicit rather 
>>> than
>>> implicit.
>>>
>>> In [1]:import struct
>>>
>>> In [2]:from numarray.ieeespecial import nan
>>>
>>> In [3]:nan
>>> Out[3]:nan
>>>
>>> In [4]:struct.pack('<d',nan)
>>>
>>
>> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
>>
>>
>>> exceptions.SystemError                               Traceback (most 
>>> recent call last)
>>>
>>> /home/astraw/<console>
>>>
>>> SystemError: frexp() result out of range
>>>
>>> In [5]:struct.pack('d',nan)
>>> Out[5]:'\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\xf8\xff'
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> No clue why that is, but it certainly looks like a bug in the struct
>> module.  It shouldn't make any difference about whether or not the array
>> protocol reports the endian though.  It's using a different notation for
>> typecodes.
>
>
> This behavior is expplained by Tim Peters:
>
> http://groups-beta.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/msg/16dbf848c050405a
>
I feared it was something like that. (No platform independent way to 
represent special values like nan, inf, and so on.)  So I think if we're 
going to require an encoding character such as '<' or '>' we should also 
include one that means native which CAN handle these special values... 
And document why it's needed and why it may get one into trouble.