[SciPy-user] bug or feature

[Christian Kristukat]

Christian Meesters wrote:
> Hi
> 
> I'm using scipy 0.3.2 and run into troubles. To illustrate them just this:
> 
>  >>> x = None
>  >>> if x: print 'hello' #nothing happens here
> ...
>  >>> from scipy import *
>  >>> a = array(None)
>  >>> if a: print 'hello' #will print 'hello', why?
> ...
> hello
>  >>> print a
> None
> 
> I consider it a nice feature that no exception is raised when None is 
> passed to array(), but apparently 'None' in Python is something 
> different than 'None' in SciPy - or is it? Should I know about this? How 
> should I deal with it? Asking with 'if' does not really work here to 
> check whether an object 'really' exists. And using try/except for every 
> possible case is not really feasible ...

Calling type() in both cases yields:

<type 'NoneType'>
and
<type 'array'>

so only the first is really None, the second is an array object which contains 
'None'. You can check that with
if a is array(None):
    print 'None'

In what cases is that behaviour causing problems? Why do you need that kind of 
arrays?

Regards, Christian