[Numpy-discussion] Behavior of .base

[Charles R Harris]

On Sun, Sep 30, 2012 at 1:59 PM, Travis Oliphant <travis at continuum.io>wrote:

> Hey all,
>
> In a github-discussion with Gael and Nathaniel, we came up with a proposal
> for .base that we should put before this list.    Traditionally, .base has
> always pointed to None for arrays that owned their own memory and to the
> "most immediate" array object parent for arrays that did not own their own
> memory.   There was a long-standing issue related to running out of stack
> space that this behavior created.
>
> Recently this behavior was altered so that .base always points to "the
> original" object holding the memory (something exposing the buffer
> interface).   This created some problems for users who relied on the fact
> that most of the time .base pointed to an instance of an array object.
>
> The proposal here is to change the behavior of .base for arrays that don't
> own their own memory so that the .base attribute of an array points to "the
> most original object" that is still an instance of the type of the array.
>    This would go into the 1.7.0 release so as to correct the issues
> reported.
>
> What are reactions to this proposal?
>
>
It sounds like this would solve the problem in the short term, but it is a
bit of a hack in that the behaviour is more complicated than either the
original or the current version. So I could see this in 1.7, but it might
be preferable in the long term to work out what attributes are needed to
solve Gael's problem more directly.

Chuck
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