[Numpy-discussion] Recarray attributes writeable

[Andrew Straw]

Erin Sheldon wrote:

>Anyway - Recarrays have convenience attributes such that
>fields may be accessed through "." in additioin to
>the "field()" method.  These attributes are designed for
>read only; one cannot alter the data through them.
>Yet they are writeable:
>
>  
>
>>>>tr=numpy.recarray(10, formats='i4,f8,f8', names='id,ra,dec')
>>>>tr.field('ra')[:] = 0.0
>>>>tr.ra
>>>>        
>>>>
>array([ 0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.])
>
>  
>
>>>>tr.ra = 3
>>>>tr.ra
>>>>        
>>>>
>3
>  
>
>>>>tr.field('ra')
>>>>        
>>>>
>array([ 0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.])
>
>I feel this should raise an exception, just as with trying to write
>to the "size" attribute. Any thoughts?
>  
>
I have not used recarrays much, so take this with the appropriate 
measure of salt.

I'd prefer to drop the entire pseudo-attribute thing completely before 
it gets entrenched. (Perhaps it's too late.)

I've used a similar system in pytables which, although it is convenient 
in the short term and for interactive use, there are corner cases that 
result in long term headaches. I think you point out one such issue for 
recarrays. There will be more. For example:

In [1]:import numpy

In [2]:tr=numpy.recarray(10, formats='i4,f8,f8', names='id,ra,dec')

In [3]:tr.field('ra')[:] = 0.0

In [4]:tr.ra
Out[4]:array([ 0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.,  0.])

In [5]:del tr.ra
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
exceptions.AttributeError                            Traceback (most 
recent call last)

/home/astraw/<console>

AttributeError: 'recarray' object has no attribute 'ra'

The above seems completely counterintuitive -- an attribute error for 
something I just accessed? Yes, I know what's going on, but it certainly 
makes life more confusing than it need be, IMO.

Another issue is that it is possible to have field names that are not 
valid Python identifier strings.