[Numpy-discussion] optimizing power() for complex and real cases

[Gary Ruben]

Tim Hochberg wrote:
<big snip>
> As I've been thinking about this some more, I think the correct thing to 
> do is not to mess with  the power ufuncs at all. Rather in x.__pow__ 
> (since I don't know that there's anywhere else to do it), after the 
> above checks check the types of the array and in the cases where the 
> first argument is a float or complex and the second argument is some 
> sort of integer array. This would be dispatched to some other helper 
> function instead of the normal pow_ufunc. In other words, optimize:
> 
> A**2, A**2.0, A**(2.0+0j), etc
> 
> and
> 
> A**array([1,2,3])
> 
> but not
> 
> A**array[1.0, 2.0, 3.0]
> 
> I think that this takes care of the optimization slowing down power for 
> general floats and optimizes the only array-array case that really matter.

I think this might still be a tiny bit dangerous despite not observing 
monotonicity problems and would be a bit more conservative and change it to:

optimize:

A**2, A**(2+0j), etc

and

A**array([1,2,3])

but not

A**array[1.0, 2.0, 3.0], A**2.0, A**(2.0+0j)

--
Gary R.