[Numpy-discussion] Records in scipy core

[Perry Greenfield]

Travis Oliphant wrote:

> 
> Thus, I would like to revive discussion of the record object for 
> inclusion in scipy core.  I pretty much agree with the semantics that 
> Perry described in his final email (is this all implemented in numarray, 
> yet?), 

No, it was only talk to date, with plans to implment it, but 
other things have drawn our work up to now.

> Question:  How important is backwards compatibility with old numarray 
> specification.  In particular, I would go with the .fields access 
> described by Perry, and eliminate the .field() approach?
> 
For us, probably not critical since we have to do some rewriting anyway.
(But it would be nice to retain for a while as deprecated).

But what about field names that don't map well to attributes?
I haven't had a chance to reread the past emails but I seem to
recall this was a significant issue. That would imply that .field()
would be needed for those cases anyway.

Perry