[SciPy-dev] in-situ resizing array in C

[Todd Miller]

On Tue, 2004-11-30 at 14:05, Travis Oliphant wrote:
> Pearu Peterson wrote:
> 
> >
> > Hi,
> >
> > I have a question to Numeric/Numarray experts:
> >
> > Let A be a contiguous one or two-dimensional array with shape (n,) or 
> > (m,n), respectively. Let k be a positive integer less than n.
> > Reference count for A is 1. The objective is to execute A=A[:k] or 
> > A=A[:,:k], respctively, in C.
> >
> > Q: Is it safe to resize the array A by simply resetting its 
> > dimensions, that is,
> >    A->dimensions[0] = k;
> > or
> >    A->dimensions[1] = k;
> 
> For 2-D arrays you need to set A->strides correctly too.  A->strides 
> contains the number of *bytes* to jump to get to the next element in 
> that dimension (it's what makes non-contiguous arrays work).  For the 
> second case you would have to set:
> 
>    A->strides[0] = k*A->descr->elsize.
> 

The rows of the slice (A[:,:k]) are the same "storage distance" apart as
the rows of the original array (A) so I don't think the strides change
in this particular case.

Todd