On Thu, Jun 23, 2011 at 03:53:31PM -0500, Mark Wiebe wrote: > concluded that adding masks to the core ndarray appears is the best way to > deal with the problem in general.
It seems to me that this is going to make the numpy array a way more complex object. Althought it is currently quite simple, that object has already a hard time getting acceptance beyond the scientific community, whereas it should really be used in many other places. Right now, the numpy array can be seen as an extension of the C array, basically a pointer, a data type, and a shape (and strides). This enables easy sharing with libraries that have not been written with numpy in mind. The limitations of the subclassing approach that you mention do not seem fundemental to me. For instance the impossibility to mix subclasses could perhaps be solved using the Mixin Pattern. Ufuncs need work, but I have the impression that your proposal is simply to solve the special case of masked data in the ufunc by breaking the simple numpy array model. By moving in the core a growing amount of functionality, it seems to me that you are going to make it more and more complex while loosing its genericity. Each new feature will need to go in the core and induce a high cost. Making inheritance and unfuncs more generic seems to me like a better investment. My 2 cents, Gael PS: I am on the verge of conference travel, so I will not be able to participate any further in the discussion. _______________________________________________ NumPy-Discussion mailing list [email protected] http://mail.scipy.org/mailman/listinfo/numpy-discussion
