[Numpy-discussion] Questions about converting to numpy

[Christopher Barker]

Russell E. Owen wrote:
> So I finally bit the bullet and converted most of my code from Numeric 
> and numarray to numpy.

good for you!

I can only help with one:
> - Even after reading the book I'm not really clear on why one would use 
> numpy.float_ instead of numpy.float or float

They float and numpy.float are the same, and numpy.float_ is the same as 
numpy.float64:

 >>> import numpy
 >>> float is numpy.float
True
 >>> numpy.float64 is numpy.float64
True
 >>>

float was added to the numpy namespace so that we could write consistent 
code like:

a = array(object, numpy.float32)
b = array(object, numpy.float)

i.e. have it all in the same namespace.

I'm not sure why float_ is an alias for float64, though I'm guessing 
it's possible that on some platforms they are not the same.

-Chris



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Christopher Barker, Ph.D.
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