[SciPy-User] Notification when array is modified

[John Jumper]

I am looking for a method so that I can be notified when the contents
of a numpy array change.

A simplified class that illustrates the desired functionality is below.

class ComputeDerived(object):
    def __init__(self, n):
        self.A = np.zeros(n)
        self.B = np.zeros(n)
        self.change_mask = np.ones(n, dtype=np.bool)
        self._Derived = expensive(self.A,self.B)

    def set_A(self, i, x):
        self.A[i] = x
        self.change_mask[i] = True

    def set_B(self, i, x):
        self.B[i] = x
        self.change_mask[i] = True

    def Derived(self):
        if np.any(self.change_mask):
            for i in np.nonzero(self.change_mask)[0]:
                self._Derived[i] = expensive(A[i],B[i])
            self.change_mask[:] = False
        return self._Derived

This class works, but I lack the power of numpy's indexing syntax to
change A or B.  I would like to be able to write
compute_derived.A[(3,5,6)] = 1 and then be notified that A has
changed.  Otherwise, if I want to use a numpy interface for A and B, I
would have to store old copies of A and B and traverse these copies
every time Derived is called.

Is there any interface in numpy so that I could expose A and B
directly as writeable numpy arrays but be notified when they are
modified?  Alternatively, if I subclass ndarray, is there some
exhaustive list of methods that can change the underlying data (I
would be worried about view objects here)?

In case it makes a difference, my actual use case is a C++ class
wrapped using Boost::Python.  The numpy arrays A and B would point at
aligned float* members of my C++ class.

Thank you,
John Jumper