[Numpy-discussion] datetime64

[Pierre GM]

On Oct 29, 2009, at 4:22 PM, Alok Singhal wrote:

> Hi,
>
> On 29/10/09: 12:18, Ariel Rokem wrote:
>> I want to start trying out the new dtype for representation of arrays
>> of times, datetime64, which is implemented in the current svn. Is
>> there any documentation anywhere? I know of this proposal:
>>
>> http://numpy.scipy.org/svn/numpy/tags/1.3.0/doc/neps/datetime-proposal3.rst
>>
>> but apparently the current implementation of the dtype didn't follow
>> this proposal - the hypothetical examples in the spec don't work with
>> the implementation.
>> I just want to see a couple of examples on how to initialize arrays  
>> of
>> this dtype, and what kinds of operations can be done with them (and
>> with timedelta64).
>
> I think the only thing that works as of now for dates and deltas is
> using datetime.datetime and datetime.timedelta objects in the
> initilization of the arrays.  See
> http://projects.scipy.org/numpy/ticket/1225 for some tests.

Oh yes, I saw that... Marty Fuhry, one of our GSoC students, had  
written some pretty extensive series of tests to allocate datetime/ 
strings to elements of a ndarray with datetime64 dtype. He also had  
written some functions allowing conversion from one frequency to  
another. Unfortunately, I don't think his work has been incorporated  
yet. Maybe Jarrod M. and Travis O. will shed some light on that  
matter. I for one would be quite interested into checking what's  
happening on that front.

In other more personal news: Ariel, I gonna be quite busy for the next  
couple of weeks, but we should chat off-list about our parallel  
efforts with time series (I still haven't found the time to delve into  
nipy, could you point me tothe most relevant part).