[SciPy-user] default dtype

[Alan G Isaac]

On Fri, 30 Dec 2005, Travis Oliphant apparently wrote: 
> The default can be changed in one place in the C-code if 
> we did decide to change it.   Now's the time because 
> version 1.0 is approaching in the next couple of months. 

Once discovered, it does not matter much of course. 
My only argument for the change is the effect on prospective 
users as opposed to the existing base of knowledgeable 
users: most I suspect will come from environments where 
every number containing object is filled with floats by 
default.  (I think GAUSS and Matlab work this way.)  Any 
ordinary user who creates an array of zeros (or empty) and 
then assigns floats to a few elements is likely to be 
surprised by the outcome, I believe. 

Cheers, 
Alan Isaac