[Numpy-discussion] Memory layout of record arrays

[David Cournapeau]

On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 12:53 AM, Nicolas
Rougier<Nicolas.Rougier at loria.fr> wrote:
>
>
> Hello,
>
> I've been using record arrays to create arrays with different types
> and since I'm doing a lot of computation on each of the different
> fields, the default memory layout does not serve my computations.
> Ideally, I would like to have record arrays where each field is a
> contiguous block of memory.

I don't think you can do it with record arrays: one of the fundamental
design choice of numpy array layout is that the data pointer points to
one block of N items, where each item is described by the dtype. To
have contiguous layout for each member of the structured dtype, you
need two arrays with the corresponding dtype.

cheers,

David