[PYTHON MATRIX-SIG] Let's get going

[Hinsen Konrad]

   > Why would it have to be copied whenever it is passed to a function?
   > It would be sufficient to make a copy whenever the matrix is
   > changed.

   This gets back to my earlier comment that slices, as proposed cannot
   be matrices because they store a reference to the data from which they
   were created and a bunch of offsets for accessing the orinal data
   properly.  When passed to math/sci libraries, they'll have to be
   converted to real matrices so that their data are contiguous.

I see. "Function" means "function in an external library", not
"Python function" as I had assumed.

BTW, there is a good book called "Scientific and Engineering C++"
that appeared recently, unfortunately I don't remember the names
of the authors (but I can check at home). It contains a
very good discussion of how a matrix class in C++ could be
designed, and this covers many of the topics we are discussing
here. Unfortunately they treat only one- and two-dimensional
matrices.

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Konrad Hinsen                     | E-Mail: hinsenk@ere.umontreal.ca
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