[Numpy-discussion] Re: Trying out Numeric3

[Travis Oliphant]

Michiel Jan Laurens de Hoon wrote:

> Travis Oliphant wrote:
>
>> Michiel Jan Laurens de Hoon wrote:
>>
>>> Another warning was that PyArrayObject's "dimensions" doesn't seem 
>>> to be an int array any more.
>>
>>
>> Yes.   To allow for dimensions that are bigger than 32-bits, 
>> dimensions and strides are (intp *).  intp is a signed integer with 
>> sizeof(intp) == sizeof(void *).  On 32-bit systems, the warning will 
>> not cause problems.  We could worry about fixing it by typedefing 
>> intp to int (instead of the current long for 32-bit systems).
>>
> Do 4 gigabyte 1D numerical python arrays occur in practice? If I 
> understand correctly, the current implementation gives dimensions a 
> different pointer type on different platforms. This will break 
> extension modules on platforms other than 32-bits, as the extension 
> module expects dimensions to be a pointer to int.

This is a must have.   Yes, extension modules will have to be recompiled 
and pointers changed on 64-bit platforms,  but this has to be done.      
If you see a better solution, I'd love to hear it.  The earlier the better.

-Travis