[Numpy-discussion] recarray field names

[Travis Oliphant]

John Parejko wrote:

>Howdy!  I just wanted to voice my agreement with this statment by Erin Sheldon:
>
> > I brought up the issue a while back of having a simple way to
> > access the field names of an array. The quick summary: accessing
> > field names has some oddness that needs cleaning up.
>
>Sometimes a['name'], sometimes a.field('name').  I vastly prefer the first 
>version; it has become my favored way of dealing with my FITS and ASCII 
>data.  But using the bracket notation sometimes gives an error, and I 
>haven't quite figured out what the circumstances are.
>  
>

Bracketed version should never give an error.  If you see it, it's a bug.

>Also, "for name in a.dtype.fields:" or "for name in a.fields:" would be 
>very, very handy.
>  
>
You can do this, now  but each key in the fields dictionary might not be 
unique because titles will also be keys in the dictionary.

A unique list of ordered names can now (in NumPy SVN) be obtained using

for name in a.dtype.names


-Travis