[Numpy-discussion] Fixing PyArray_Descr flags member size, ABI vs pickling issue

[Robert Kern]

On Tue, Mar 6, 2012 at 03:53, David Cournapeau <cournape at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> This is following the discussion on bug
> http://projects.scipy.org/numpy/ticket/2017
>
> Essentially, there is a discrepency between the actual type of the
> flags member in the dtype C structure (char) and how it is declared in
> the descriptor table (T_INT). The problem is that we are damned if we
> fix it, damned if we are not:
>  - fixing T_INT to T_BYTE. flag in python is now fixed, but it breaks
> pickled numpy arrays

Is the problem that T_BYTE returns a single-item string? My
handwrapping skills are rusty (Cython has blissfully eradicated this
from my memory), but aren't these T_INT/T_BYTE things just convenient
shortcuts for exposing C struct members as Python attributes? Couldn't
we just write a full getter function for returning the correct value,
just returned as a Python int instead of a str.

-- 
Robert Kern