[Numpy-discussion] Should bool_ subclass int?

[Travis Oliphant]

>
>
> On 7/6/07, *Travis Oliphant* <oliphant.travis at ieee.org 
> <mailto:oliphant.travis at ieee.org>> wrote:
>
>     Timothy Hochberg wrote:
>     >
>     > I'm working on getting some old code working with numpy and I
>     noticed
>     > that bool_ is not a subclass of int. Given that python's bool
>     > subclasses into and that the other scalar types are subclasses of
>     > their respective counterparts it seems at first glance that
>     > numpy.bool_ should subclass python's bool, which in turn subclasses
>     > int. Or am I missing something here?
>     The reason it is not, is because it is not binary compatible with
>     Python's integer.   The numpy bool_ is always only 8-bits while the
>     Python integer is 32-bits or 64-bits.
>
>     This could be changed I suspect, but then it would break the
>     relationship between scalars and their array counterparts 
>
>
> Do you have and idea off the top of your head head how painful this 
> would be from an implementation standpoint. And is there a theoretical 
> reason that it is important that the scalar and array implementations 
> match? I would think that, conceptually, they are all 1-bit integers, 
> and it seems that the 8-bit, versus 32- or 64-bits is just an 
> implementation detail.
It would probably take about 2-3 hours to make the change and about 3 
more hours to fix the problems that were not anticipated.    Basically, 
we would have to special-case the bool like we do the unicode scalar 
(which also doesn't necessarily match the array-based representation but 
instead follows the Python implementation).

I guess I don't really see a problem in switching just the numpy.bool_ 
scalar to be a sub-class of the Python bool type and adjusting the code 
to make the switch when creating a scalar.

-Travis