[Numpy-discussion] Thoughts for 1.1

[Charles R Harris]

On Wed, Apr 2, 2008 at 4:30 PM, Robert Kern <robert.kern at gmail.com> wrote:

> On undefined, Charles R Harris <charlesr.harris at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi All,
> >
> > I think it would enhance broadcasting if functions like sum, mean, etc
> > didn't change the number of dimensions. For example, suppose one wanted
> to
> > subtract the mean along dimension 2 from the same axis of the original
> > array, then something like
> >
> > In [44]: a = ones((2,3,4,5))
> >
> > In [45]: a -= a.mean(2)
> >
> > would do the trick. Similar modifications might also suit functions of
> the
> > argmax, argmin, argsort type and allow a common argtake function that
> would
> > allow one to take along a specified axis, making easy something that is
> > somewhat complicated at the moment.
> >
> > The main drawback that I see is that scalars would no longer be 0D, but
> that
> > could be special cased as scalars will broadcast correctly no matter the
> > ndim.
>
> -1
>
> I really don't want to see this amount of code breakage, even in 1.1.
> Add another keyword argument if you wish, but don't break the current
> API.
>

Apart from that, what do you think of the idea? I currently spend more
effort than I like doing newaxis magic.

Chuck
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