On Tue, Sep 23, 2014 at 4:40 AM, Eric Moore <e...@redtetrahedron.org> wrote:
> Improving the dtype system requires working on c code. > yes -- it sure does. But I think that is a bit of a Red Herring. I'm barely competent in C, and don't like it much, but the real barrier to entry for me is not that it's in C, but that it's really complex and hard to hack on, as it wasn't designed to support custom dtypes, etc. from the start. There is a lot of ugly code in there that has been hacked in to support various functionality over time. If there was a clean dtype-extension system in C, then A) it wouldn't be bad C to write, and B) would be pretty easy to make a Cython-wrapped version. Travis gave a nice vision for the future, but in the meantime, I'm wondering: Could we hack in a generic "custom dtype" dtype object into the current system that would delegate everything to the dtype object -- in a truly object-oriented way. I'm imagining that this custom dtype object would be a pyObject and thus very hackable, easy to make a new subclass, etc -- essentially like making a new class in python that emulates one of the built-in type interfaces. This would be slow as a dog -- if inside that C loop, numpy would have to call out to python to do anyting, maybe as simple as arithmetic, but it would be clean, extensible system, and a good way for folks to plug in and try out new dtypes when performance didn't matter, or as prototypes for something that would get plugged in at the C level later once the API was worked out. Is this even possible without too much hacking to the current dtype system? Would it be as simple as adding a bit to the object dtype? -Chris -- Christopher Barker, Ph.D. Oceanographer Emergency Response Division NOAA/NOS/OR&R (206) 526-6959 voice 7600 Sand Point Way NE (206) 526-6329 fax Seattle, WA 98115 (206) 526-6317 main reception chris.bar...@noaa.gov
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