[Numpy-discussion] Is this expected behavior?

[Russel Howe]

Since they are iterators, is it possible to check for the second 
condition and reverse both of them so the behavior I expect happens or 
does this  break something else?

Russel
Robert Kern wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 18, 2010 at 13:41, Russel Howe <russel at appliedminds.com> wrote:
>> This looks like the difference between memmove and memcpy to me, but I
>> am not sure what the expected behavior of numpy should be.  The first
>> shift behaves the way I expect, the second is surprising.
> 
> memmove() and memcpy() are not used for these operations (and in
> general, they can't be). Rather, iterators are created and looped over
> to do the assignments. Because you are not making copies on the
> right-hand-side, you are modifying the RHS as the iterators assign to
> the LHS.
> 
>> In [3]: a[:, :-1] = a[:, 1:]
>>
>> In [4]: a
>> Out[4]:
>> array([[0, 5, 4, 8, 2, 7, 8, 7, 6, 6],
>>        [6, 3, 3, 9, 8, 0, 8, 9, 5, 5],
>>        [0, 1, 1, 2, 5, 8, 2, 5, 3, 3],
>>        [0, 0, 2, 8, 2, 0, 7, 7, 0, 0],
>>        [8, 6, 9, 6, 3, 9, 4, 4, 5, 5],
>>        [7, 6, 9, 3, 8, 9, 9, 6, 9, 9],
>>        [8, 8, 4, 0, 3, 7, 6, 7, 6, 6],
>>        [4, 9, 2, 4, 7, 3, 6, 7, 4, 4],
>>        [2, 0, 7, 0, 7, 6, 6, 1, 6, 6],
>>        [3, 8, 8, 9, 6, 7, 2, 5, 0, 0]], dtype=uint8)
> 
> The first one works because the RHS pointer is always one step ahead
> of the LHS pointer, thus it always reads pristine data.
> 
>> In [5]: a[:, 1:] = a[:, :-1]
>>
>> In [6]: a
>> Out[6]:
>> array([[0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
>>        [6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6],
>>        [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
>>        [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
>>        [8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8],
>>        [7, 7, 7, 7, 7, 7, 7, 7, 7, 7],
>>        [8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8],
>>        [4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4],
>>        [2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2],
>>        [3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3]], dtype=uint8)
> 
> The second one fails to work as you expect because the RHS pointer is
> always one step behind the LHS pointer, thus it always reads the data
> that just got modified in the previous step. The data you expected it
> to read has already been wiped out.
>