Need more comments from scientific community on python-dev

[Sasha]

On 10/31/06, Travis Oliphant <oliphant at ee.byu.edu> wrote:

> Please read my posts about the Python type-object verses normal Python
> Object situation.  That really is the crux of the matter.
>
I read the whole python-dev thread before replying.  I may be a little
biased because I never liked somewhat cryptic letter codes in Numeric
and the change of codes from Numeric to numpy did not contribute to my
sympathy particularly when the convert script changed all unrelated
instances of 'b' in my code to something else.  I am also not a big
fan of record arrays.  I believe that numeric data should be stored in
"inverted tables," where columns of homogeneous data are stored
contiguously.  With this disclaimer, I will address a few issues
below.

> Ctypes uses a Python type object for every data-format.
> NumPy uses an instance of a data-type object for every data-format.
>
Yes, but AFAIK this is a recent innovation.  Numarray used type
objects and Numeric simply used letter codes.


> What advantage do we gain by making every instance of a data-type object
> *also* a Python type object?

I think the main advantage is that you can have instances:
>>> c_int(42)
c_int(42)

Of course, numpy has scalars for that, but ctypes also has
fixed-length arrays, that are somewhat different from ndarrays:
>>> a10 = c_int*10
>>> a10()
<__main__.c_int_Array_10 object at 0x2a95816958>


>  We get a lot of head-ache.  Have you seen
> what ctypes had to do?  It had to define a new Dictionary object so it
> could attach it to the tp_dict parameter because you can't just inherit
> from the PyTypeObject and add the fields you want to the structure.
> This is my argument.
>

But, isn't this someone else's head-ache?  Someone has already gone
through all these contortions, why not reuse the effort?  Others on
python-dev described some specific needs of ctypes that your datatype
object does not address.  Your point seems to be that numpy does not
share these needs and could use a much simpler approach.

> I for one am not going to put any effort in that direction.  People are
> free to do it, if they want, of course.  But, it's no small change.

Can you present some use cases that illustrate the advantage of your
datatype approach best?
I will try to implement them with ctypes.

>  I would, however, put effort into "undertstanding ctypes objects" as
> data-type objects.

Yes, this is the key.  I think we should better understand ctypes
limitations before proposing an alternative.  At the end of the day,
it is better to have buffer protocol that describes the data using
ctypes types than to have no standard type information at all.

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