[Numpy-discussion] BOF notes: Fernando's proposal: NumPy ndarray with named axes

[Bruce Southey]

On Thu, Jul 8, 2010 at 4:39 PM, Rob Speer <rspeer at mit.edu> wrote:
>>> Still, I have a question. Did you also agree that this should forcibly index
>>> through ticks?
>>>
>>>  arr.something[int]      -> tick-based indexing
>>>
>>
>> Yes.
>
> I feel like people are talking about different things because it's
> unclear what the .something is.
>
> If the .something is an axis name, then no. arr.year[0] should get the
> first year in the data, not the data from the "year 0".
>
> If the .something is the attribute we use for named lookup (such as
> ".named"), then yes. arr.named[2006] should get whatever tick is named
> 2006 on the first axis.
> -- Rob
> _______________________________________________

Then how is this not different than a record array?
Actually for that matter I have not seem anything that is
differentiates this from a record array. So please avoid working with
1-d case :-)

While I understand everyone wants to address this, it is rather
important to avoid having different rules than the rest of numpy. This
probably means that labels must be hashable strings - which I think is
consistent with R and SAS data structures.


Bruce