[Numpy-discussion] Typecasting changes from 1.5.1 to 1.6.1

[Mark Wiebe]

On Tue, Feb 14, 2012 at 12:27 PM, Benjamin Root <ben.root at ou.edu> wrote:

>
>
> On Tuesday, February 14, 2012, Travis Oliphant <travis at continuum.io>
> wrote:
> >> > As you can see there were changes in each release.   Most of these
> were minor prior to the change from 1.5.1 to 1.6.1. I am still reviewing
> the changes from 1.5.1 to 1.6.1.    At first blush, it looks like there are
> a lot of changes to swallow that are not necessarily minor.    I really
> would like to just say all is well, and it's no big deal.   I hope that
> users really don't care and nobody's code is really relying on array-scalar
> combination conversions.
> >> >
> >> > -Travis
> >> >
> >> >
> >> >
> >>
> >> Would it make sense to adapt this code to go into the test suite?
> >
> > Possibly.   I'm not sure.  I guess it depends on how much we want to
> hard-code the current behavior now.    Mark?  How confident do you feel in
> solidifying the casting rules?   We would need to add cases for overflow
> that are currently handled differently than originally specified.
> >
> > -Travis
> >
>
> I don't think it is so much a question about whether or not to solidify
> these casting rules as much it is about being aware of changes in the
> table.  This prevents accidental changes and forces us to make purposeful
> changes to the agreed test results.
>

This is the best reason for putting it in the tests. It doesn't mean that
we never change how the casting rules work, it means we never
*accidentally* change how they work.


> This would also make it very easy to diagnose cross-platform differences.
>
> Of course, the question is, what do we consider to be the "truth" data?
>

I think this would be either the current behavior, or whatever we decide
should be the behavior, with associated coding effort to make that change.

-Mark


>
> Ben Root
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