[SciPy-dev] Arrays as dtypes

[Ed Schofield]

Hi all,

Do we need to allow arrays as dtypes?

I've just found a bug in the test suite for the matrix module:

    assert all(array(conjugate(transpose(B)), mB.H))

which should be

    assert all(array(conjugate(transpose(B)) == mB.H))

This was silently passing before without running the desired test.  This
used the dtype of mB.H to create the array instead of comparing the
elements properly.

I'd like to make a case for removing the ability to use arrays as dtypes
to avoid little bugs like these.  The meaning of the explicit notation:

    array(a, b.dtype)

rather than

    array(a, b)

is also clearer to a reader and not difficult to type.


-- Ed