On Wed, Nov 2, 2011 at 8:20 PM, Benjamin Root <[email protected]> wrote: > On Wednesday, November 2, 2011, Nathaniel Smith <[email protected]> wrote: >> By R compatibility, I specifically had in mind in-memory >> compatibility. rpy2 provides a more-or-less seamless within-process >> interface between R and Python (and specifically lets you get numpy >> views on arrays returned by R functions), so if we can make this work >> for R arrays containing NA too then that'd be handy. (The rpy2 author >> requested this in the last discussion here: >> http://mail.scipy.org/pipermail/numpy-discussion/2011-June/057084.html) >> When it comes to disk formats, then this doesn't matter so much, since >> IO routines have to translate between different representations all >> the time anyway. > > Interesting, but I still have to wonder if that should be on the wishlist > for MISSING. I guess it would matter by knowing whether people would be > fully converting from R or gradually transitioning from it? That is > something that I can't answer.
Well, I'm one of the people who would use it, so yeah :-). I've been trying to standardize my code on Python for a while now, but there's a ton of statistical tools that are only really available through R, and that will remain true for a while yet. So I use rpy2 when I have to. >> I take the replacement of my line about MISSING disallowing unmasking >> and your line about MISSING assignment being destructive as basically >> expressing the same idea. Is that fair, or did you mean something >> else? > > I am someone who wants to get to the absolute core of ideas. Also, this > expression cleanly delineates the differences as binary. > > By expressing it this way, we also shy away from implementation details. For > example, Unmasking can be programmatically prevented for MISSING while it > could be implemented by other indirect means for IGNORE. Not that those are > the preferred ways, only that the phrasing is more flexible and exacting. > >> >> Finally, do you think that people who want IGNORED support care about >> having a convenient API for masking/unmasking values? You removed that >> line, but I don't know if that was because you disagreed with it, or >> were just trying to simplify. > > See previous. I like getting to the core of things too, but unless there's actual disagreement, then I think even less central points are still worth noting :-). I've tried editing things a bit to make the compare/contrast clearer based on your comments, and put it up here: https://github.com/njsmith/numpy/wiki/NA-discussion-status Maybe it would be better to split each list into core idea versus extra niceties or something? I'm not sure. -- Nathaniel _______________________________________________ NumPy-Discussion mailing list [email protected] http://mail.scipy.org/mailman/listinfo/numpy-discussion
