[Tutor] Creating a subclass of NumArray

[ligon@are.berkeley.edu]

I'd like to be able to instantiate and work with objects
which possess the properties of matrices, but which also
carry some additional information.  

Numarray provides a NumArray object which can be treated as 
a matrix.  One way to instantiate these objects is by a call 
to a function array, like

>>> from numarray import *
>>> x=array([[1,2],[3,4]])
>>> print x
[[1 2]
 [3 4]]
>>> print x.__class__
<class 'numarray.numarraycore.NumArray'>

What I'd like to do is create a subclass of
NumArray; something like:

>>> class MyArray(numarraycore.NumArray):
...   def __init__(self,x):
...     numarraycore.NumArray.__init__(self,x)
...     self.myfield={}

However, the function array which I used above to instantiate
an NumArray object isn't at all the same as
numarraycore.NumArray.__init__().  The latter takes a much
more complicated set of arguments, so that:

>>> y=MyArray(x)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
  File "<stdin>", line 3, in __init__
ValueError: invalid shape tuple

I'd *like* to use the simpler instantiation provided by array();
something like:

>>> class MyArray(numarraycore.NumArray):
...   def __init__(self,x):
...     self=array(x)
...     self.myfield={}
... 

But this doesn't work:

>>> y=MyArray(x)
>>> print y
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
  File "/usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/numarray/numarraycore.py", line 711, in __str__
    return array_str(self)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/numarray/numarraycore.py", line 1357, in array_str
    return arrayprint.array2string(
  File "/usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/numarray/arrayprint.py", line 178, in array2string
    x = a[()]
libnumarray.error: can't get buffer size

Presumably y hasn't really properly inherited all the attributes of a
NumArray.  What's the right way to solve this problem?  For bonus
points, is it possible to solve it without delving too deeply into
the guts of numarray?

Thanks,
-Ethan

-- 
Ethan Ligon, Assoc. Professor                           ligon at are.berkeley.edu
Dept. of Agricultural & Resource Economics
University of California                        http://are.berkeley.edu/~ligon
Berkeley, CA 94720-3310                                          (510)643-5411