[PYTHON MATRIX-SIG] Default axis

[Jim Hugunin]

Several people how now brought up the issue of the default axis in the =
various functions in NumPy. The inconsistency of this definition is =
really a problem.  I think that it's really important to have a =
consistent default axis, and I propose that the default axis be made -1 =
(or -2 for things that expect 2d arrays).  This works fairly well for me =
in almost all cases (even though this is the opposite of the current =
behavior for things like add.reduce).  On machines with certain cache =
architectures (and with contiguous arrays) this even makes sense as the =
most computationally efficient choice.

My only problem with this is the concatenation function which I =
personally think should only be implemented along axis 0, though I've =
been convinced this is too limiting.  Having this default to a different =
axis than 0 really bothers me, but I suppose I'll get over it.

Comments are welcome - Jim

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