[Numpy-discussion] Pull Request Review: R-like sample function

Robert Kern robert.kern at gmail.com
Thu Sep 1 22:48:26 EDT 2011


On Thu, Sep 1, 2011 at 21:39, Christopher Jordan-Squire <cjordan1 at uw.edu> wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 1, 2011 at 10:01 PM,  <josef.pktd at gmail.com> wrote:

>> First these functions would need to be deprecated.
>
> I discussed this with a few other people, and they suggested that it
> could be alright since it's for numpy 2.0 rather than numpy 1.x. For
> the 2.0 version it would be perfectly reasonable to have a break with
> the API. (Though, as I said, it's not a break with the API.)

Yes it is. A very long-standing API. The fact that you had to go
remove a number of actual uses of the aliases should have told you
this. The documentation is not the API. You cannot remove these
aliases without a deprecation period lasting one full minor release.
2.0 is not license to make backwards-incompatible changes solely for
aesthetic reasons. There is no reason not to follow the standard
deprecation schedule here.

> I can't think of many other instances of aliased functions like that
> in numpy, though--but perhaps I'm not thinking hard enough. It
> certainly seemed strange to have 4 names for the same function.

numpy.random was actually replacing multiple libraries at once. The
aliases kind of accreted.

-- 
Robert Kern

"I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless
enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as
though it had an underlying truth."
  -- Umberto Eco



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