[Numpy-discussion] Tabular data package

[Bruce Southey]

On 10/05/2009 06:20 PM, Robert Kern wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 5, 2009 at 18:15, Elaine Angelino<elaine.angelino at gmail.com>  wrote:
>
>    
>>> Well, what other recarray functionality are you using?
>>>        
>> None, in our code.   We also thought that since at least some people like
>> using the attribute reference property, perhaps users of tabarrays might too
>> (though we don't personally in our own work)   Recarrays still seemed to be
>> being supported by NumPy, so it seemed to make sense to use them.   but the
>> only functional thing in our code are those constructors.
>>      
> Then I would suggest making tabarrays subclass from ndarray. If you
> like, provide a tabrecarray that subclasses from both recarray and
> tabarray so that people who like attribute access can .view() to their
> heart's content.
>
>    
>>>> (Also, is first casting to recarrays and then viewing as ndarrays more
>>>> expensive than if we went through ndarray directly?)
>>>>          
>>>        
>> But if NumPy decided to include ndarray versions of the from*() constructors
>> in the distribution, would this be achieved by first using the recarray
>> constructor and then viewing as ndarray?  Or would something more "direct"
>> be done?
>>      
> We would fix the functions to not do any unnecessary .view()s.
>
>    
Hi Elaine,
I do want to look more at what you have done as some of the features are 
very interesting.

This discussion raises the question of what do you find missing in numpy 
that you have included in tabular package?
In particular is there a particular set of functions that you think 
could be added to numpy or even create a 'better' recarray class?
There are real advantages of having at least core components in numpy.

Bruce