[Numpy-discussion] Re: Multiarray PEP

[Russell E. Owen]

In article <421446E3.7080202 at ee.byu.edu>,
 Travis Oliphant <oliphant at ee.byu.edu> wrote:

> I've never had a problem with just the typecode characters although 
> aliases (like Int16 or Short) which might be more meaningful are nice.   
> Are shadow-classes important in this case?  To me they look a little 
> like extra bulk with no gain.  I'd love to be educated as to why it is 
> worth the extra effort to have a bunch of instances lying around. 

Instances can give you useful information. For example:
- the number of bytes needed to represent a value
- the min and max values for that type (numarray doesn't do this yet, 
but I really hope it'll be added someday).

I personally dislike character codes because they are uninformative and 
because they meaningless without the documentation.

-- Russell