[Numpy-discussion] basearray / arraykit

[Travis Oliphant]

Christopher Barker wrote:
> Travis Oliphant wrote:
>> 1) Implement a base-array with no getitem method nor setitem method 
>> at all
>>
>> 2) Implement a sub-class that supports only creation of data-types 
>> corresponding to existing Python scalars (Boolean, Long-based 
>> integers, Double-based floats, complex and object types).  Then, all 
>> array accesses should return the underlying Python objects.
>> This sub-class should also only do view-based indexing (basically 
>> it's old Numeric behavior inside of NumPy).
>
>> Item 1) should be pushed for inclusion in 2.6  and possibly even 
>> something like 2)
>
> + sys.maxint
>
> Having even this very basic n-d object in the standard lib would be a 
> MAJOR boon to python.
>

I totally agree.   I've been advertising this for at least 8 months, but 
nobody is really willing to work on it (or fund it).   At least we have 
a summer student who is going to try and get Google summer-of-code money 
for it.  If you have any ability to bump up the ratings of summer of 
code applications.  Please consider bumping up his application.

> However, as I think about it, one reason I'd really like to see an 
> nd-array in python is as a standard way to pass binary data around. 
> Right now, I'm working with the GDAL lib for geo-referenced raster 
> images, PIL, numpy and wxPython. I'm making a lot of copies to and 
> from python strings to pass the binary data back and forth. If all 
> these libs used the same nd-array, this would be much more efficient. 
> However, that would require non-python data types, most notably a byte 
> (or char, whatever) type.
>
Anything in Python would need to define at least a basic bytes type, for 
exactly this purpose.  So, we are on the same page. 


I'm thinking now that the data-type object now in NumPy would make a 
nice addition to Python as well for a standard way to define 
data-types.   Then,  Python itself wouldn't have to do anything useful 
with non-standard arrays (except pass them around), but it would at 
least have a way to describe them.


-Travis