[Numpy-discussion] chararray behavior

[Alan McIntyre]

Since chararray doesn't currently have any tests, I'm writing some,
and I ran across a couple of things that didn't make sense to me:

1. The code for __mul__ is exactly the same as that for __rmul__; is
there any reason __rmul__ shouldn't just call __mul__?
1.5. __radd__ seems like it doesn't do anything fundamentally
different from __add__, is there a reason to have a separate
implementation of __radd__?
2. The behavior of __mul__ seems odd:

>>> Q=np.chararray((2,2),itemsize=1,buffer='abcd')
>>> Q
chararray([['a', 'b'],
       ['c', 'd']],
      dtype='|S1')
>>> Q*3
chararray([['aaa', 'bbb'],
       ['ccc', 'ddd']],
      dtype='|S4')
>>> Q*4
chararray([['aaaa', 'bbbb'],
       ['cccc', 'dddd']],
      dtype='|S4')
>>> Q*5
chararray([['aaaa', 'bbbb'],
       ['cccc', 'dddd']],
      dtype='|S4')

Is it supposed to work this way?

Thanks,
Alan