[Numpy-discussion] [ANN] NumPy 1.0b4 now available

[Les Schaffer]

Travis E. Oliphant wrote:
> Porting is not difficult especially using the compatibility layers 
> numpy.oldnumeric and numpy.numarray and the alter_code1.py modules in 
> those packages.  The full C-API of Numeric is supported as is the C-API 
> of Numarray.
>   

this is not true of numpy.core.records  (nee numarray.records):

1. numarray's records.py does not show up in numpy.numarray.

2. my code that uses recarrays is now broken if i use
numpy.core.records; for one thing, you have no .info attribute. another
example: strings pushed into the arrays *apparently* were stripped
automagically in the old recarray (so we coded appropriately), but now
are not.  

3. near zero docstrings for this module, hard to see how the new
records  works.

4. last year i made a case for the old records to return a list of the
column names. it looks like the column names are now attributes of the
record object, any chance of getting a list of them
recarrayObj.get_colNames() or some such? yes, in working code, we know
what the names are, but in test code we are creating recarrays from
parsing of Excel spreadsheets, and for testing purposes, its nice to
know what records THINKS are the names of all the columns.

Les Schaffer