[Numpy-discussion] is __array_ufunc__ ready for prime-time?

[Chris Barker]

On Mon, Nov 6, 2017 at 4:28 PM, Stephan Hoyer <shoyer at gmail.com> wrote:

>
>> What's needed, though, is not just a single ABC. Some thought and design
>> needs to go into segmenting the ndarray API to declare certain behaviors,
>> just like was done for collections:
>>
>> https://docs.python.org/3/library/collections.abc.html
>>
>> You don't just have a single ABC declaring a collection, but rather "I am
>> a mapping" or "I am a mutable sequence". It's more of a pain for developers
>> to properly specify things, but this is not a bad thing to actually give
>> code some thought.
>>
>
> I agree, it would be nice to nail down a hierarchy of duck-arrays, if
> possible. Although, there are quite a few options, so I don't know how
> doable this is.
>

Exactly -- there are an exponential amount of options...


> Well, to get the ball rolling a bit, the key thing that matplotlib needs
> to know is if `shape`, `reshape`, 'size', broadcasting, and logical
> indexing is respected. So, I see three possible abc's here: one for
> attribute access (things like `shape` and `size`) and another for shape
> manipulations (broadcasting and reshape, and assignment to .shape).


I think we're going to get into an string of ABCs:

ArrayLikeForMPL_ABC

etc, etc.....


> And then a third abc for indexing support, although, I am not sure how
> that could get implemented...


This is the really tricky one -- all ABCs really check is the existence of
methods -- making sure they behave the same way is up to the developer of
the ducktype.

which is K, but will require discipline.

But indexing, specifically fancy indexing, is another matter -- I'm not
sure if there even a way with an ABC to check for what types of indexing
are support, but we'd still have the problem with whether the semantics are
the same!

For example, I work with netcdf variable objects, which are partly
duck-typed as ndarrays, but I think n-dimensional fancy indexing works
differently... how in the world do you detect that with an ABC???

For the shapes and reshaping, I wrote an ShapedLikeNDArray mixin/ABC
> for astropy, which may be a useful starting point as it also provides
> a way to implement the methods ndarray uses to reshape and get
> elements: see
> https://github.com/astropy/astropy/blob/master/astropy/utils/misc.py#L863


Sounds like a good starting point for discussion.

-CHB



-- 

Christopher Barker, Ph.D.
Oceanographer

Emergency Response Division
NOAA/NOS/OR&R            (206) 526-6959   voice
7600 Sand Point Way NE   (206) 526-6329   fax
Seattle, WA  98115       (206) 526-6317   main reception

Chris.Barker at noaa.gov
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/numpy-discussion/attachments/20171107/a59fce7c/attachment.html>