[Numpy-discussion] Syntax Improvement for Array Transpose

[Todd]

On Tue, Jun 25, 2019 at 10:42 AM Stephan Hoyer <shoyer at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Jun 25, 2019 at 7:20 AM Todd <toddrjen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Tue, Jun 25, 2019 at 9:35 AM Juan Nunez-Iglesias <jni.soma at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> On Mon, 24 Jun 2019, at 11:25 PM, Marten van Kerkwijk wrote:
>>>
>>> Just to be sure: for a 1-d array, you'd both consider `.T` giving a
>>> shape of `(n, 1)` the right behaviour? I.e., it should still change from
>>> what it is now - which is to leave the shape at `(n,)`.
>>>
>>>
>>> Just to chime in as a user: v.T should continue to be a silent no-op for
>>> 1D arrays. NumPy makes it arbitrary whether a 1D array is viewed as a row
>>> or column vector, but we often want to write .T to match the notation in a
>>> paper we're implementing.
>>>
>>
>> Why should it be silent?  This is a source of bugs.  At least in my
>> experience, generally when people write v.T it is a mistake.  Either they
>> are coming from another language that works differently, or they failed to
>> properly check their function arguments.  And if you are doing it on
>> purpose, you are doing something you know is a no-op for essentially
>> documentation purposes, and I would think that is the sort of thing you
>> need to make as explicit as possible.  "Errors should never pass silently.
>> Unless explicitly silenced."
>>
>
> Writing v.T is also sensible if you're writing code that could apply
> equally well to either a single vector or a stack of vectors. This mirrors
> the behavior of @, which also allows either single vectors or stacks of
> vectors (matrices) with the same syntax.
>

Fair enough.  But although there are valid reasons to do a divide by zero,
it still causes a warning because it is a problem often enough that people
should be made aware of it.  I think this is a similar scenario.
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